And in fact, Molinari and Idone found that there were outbreaks of significant amounts of lightning in the eyewall. But the outbreaks were episodic, preceded and followed by long periods of virtually no lightning. And most intriguing, says Molinari, was the fact that the three main episodes of lightning in the eyewall occurred just before, or as, Andrew intensified. The question of how and why hurricanes intensify has been a major focus of Molinari's research. And because of the violent nature of hurricanes, it's a difficult question to answer.
Satellite images provide information about the cloud structure, and the speed and path of a storm.
Still, most of what's happening inside a hurricane is beyond the current measurement abilities of scientists, and that is one reason scientists still have difficulty predicting the intensity of hurricanes. And that's also why scientists get excited about intriguing correlations like the eyewall episodes of lightning as Andrew intensified. Even though there are exceptions to the rule, however, the newly discovered correlation gives forecasters one more tool to help predict a storm's intensity and it provides new clues to the internal dynamics of hurricanes. During Andrew, the episodes of eyewall lightning occurred in the areas where clouds deepened most rapidly. The lightning is showing us there's something going on.