By Stephen Leahy Lightning is nature's most dazzling display of raw power, emitting hundreds of millions of volts of electricity in each strike. Both beautiful and deadly, lightning annually kills an average of 100 people and seriously injures more than 300 in the United States and Canada. Now, the North American Lightning Detection Network, which comprises the National Lightning Detection Network in the United States and the Canadian Lightning Detection Network, is using lightning itself to help meteorologists give faster and more accurate warnings of these severe weather events. The data is processed, sent back to Toronto and then distributed to the various weather offices in less than a minute. Each lightning flash shows up on a computer screen as a colored dot.
More dots indicate more lightning activity, signaling a more severe storm.
Tracking lightning also gives meteorologists an indication of the movement of the storm so they can predict its future location up to three hours in advance. The satellite relays information to a station on Earth. The control center processes data. Processed data is relayed back to satellite. Thunderstorms often move quickly.