12/22/2023 0 Comments Weatherbug lightning strikesFollow him on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to The Weather Channel podcast. Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. The Weather Company offers lightning data from Vaisala's global lightning detection network covering locations outside the United States. ( MORE: 7 Reasons Why NOAA's New GOES-S Satellite Is Important) Northern Russia, northern Canada, Alaska and southern South America all had had few strikes due to their relative lack of long-lasting warm air.Ī new specialized sensor aboard the NOAA GOES-East and also what will be the GOES-West satellites, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, will help map lightning both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground worldwide even over the most remote part of the oceans. In the heart of the Sahara, few flashes were recorded in much of eastern Libya, northwest Sudan and much of Egypt, given the typically sinking air at that latitude and lack of moisture, despite the intense heat. There are some areas of relatively few lightning flashes we found interesting. Warmer ocean water adds more warmth and water vapor to the air above it, making the atmosphere more unstable, all other factors being equal. This lightning occurs within a singular cloud. Intra-Cloud: The lightning that usually is just a flash in the sky. Cloud-to-Cloud: Lightning that jumps between at least two different clouds. This type of lightning is the bolt that strikes homes, cars and trees. ( MORE: Super Typhoon Haiyan Spawned 200,000 Lightning Flashes in 2013)Īnother detail on this map showed the enhanced lightning over the Gulf Stream, the narrow current of warmer ocean water off the U.S. What forms of lightning are there Cloud-to-Ground: Lightning stretches from the cloud all the way to Earth’s surface. Most of the tropical belts near the equator over land also had high flash densities, due to the year-round warm and humid air in those areas. The most lightning strikes detected were over or near land, given the greater instability generated as land heats up much faster than water. Some of what the map reveals isn't surprising. Holle said in an email to that an estimated 80 percent of lightning strokes in Vaisala's Global Lightning Dataset - GLD360 - are cloud-to-ground strokes, while the rest occur in cloud. ( WATCH: The Lightning Capital of the World) "It is interesting to watch the fluctuation of lightning strokes between our annual maps in locations around the world," Ron Holle, Vaisala meteorologist and lightning expert, said in the release. Northern Colombia and far northwest Venezuela.Paraguay, northeast Argentina, northern Uruguay, central and southern Brazil.Equatorial Africa, especially the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and the Philippines.(Vaisala)Īmong the many lightning hot spots that stand out in this map are: Click the image for a larger version of the map. Lightning strike density (per square kilometer per year) from 2013 through 2017.
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