Lightning has a profound impact on many aspects of modern day society. Understanding its spatial distributions is fundamental in learning to coexist with its tremendous power. This study examined the spatial distribution of cloud-to-ground lightning over southern Michigan using data provided by DTE Energy Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. Flash density and ‘lightning day’ maps were produced for...

At the end of 2008, a new lightning location system (LLS) was established as part of LINET lightning detection network, which was developed in Germany and nowadays counts over 100 sensors installed across Europe. Four sensors were installed in different parts of Croatia. Together with sensors in neighbour countries, a sensor baseline of ≈250 km has been achieved covering Croatian territory. Fir...

DECEMBER 2002 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS. Properly designed conventional lightning protection systems for ground-based structures serve to provide lightning attachment points and paths for the lightning current to follow from the attachment points into the ground without harm to the protected structure. Such systems are basically composed of three elements: 1) “air t...

Globally, most weather-related damages are caused by thunderstorms. Besides floods, strong wind, and hail, one of the major thunderstorm ground effects is lightning. Therefore, lightning investigations, including detection, cluster identification, tracking, and nowcasting are essential. To enable reliable decisions, current and predicted lightning clusterand track features as well as analysis r...

[1] Nitrogen oxides (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) produced by lightning make a major contribution to the global production of tropospheric ozone and OH. Lightning distributions inferred from standard convective parameterizations in global chemical transport models (CTMs) fail to reproduce observations from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) and the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) satellite instruments. We ...

The great difficulty of encompassing all observed features of ball lightning into a single theory makes it highly probable that many observations and experiences which have no connection to ball lightning are also categorized as ball lightning experiences. In this note we compare the eyewitness reports of ball lightning and the symptoms of epileptic seizures of the occipital lobe as described i...

JUNE 2003 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | P ositive lightning discharges (flashes) are defined as those effectively transporting a positive charge from a cloud to the earth. It is thought that less than 10% of global cloud-to-ground lightning is positive (e.g., Uman 1987). Lightning discharges (flashes) that transfer to ground both positive and negative charges are termed bipolar lightning di...

Lightning, one of the most powerful forces in nature, once was mysterious, magical and feared as the great weapon of the Gods. Ancient Greeks feared lightning as it was believed to be hurled by Zeus, the king of the Gods. For the Vikings, lightning was produced by Thor as his hammer struck an anvil while riding his chariot across the sky. American Indians believed that lightning was caused by b...

3D mapping system like the LMA Lightning Mapping Array are a leap forward in lightning observation. LMA measurements has lead to an improvement on the analysis of the fine structure of lightning, allowing to characterize the duration and maximum extension of the cloud fraction of a lightning flash. During several years of operation, the first LMA deployed in Europe has been providing a large am...