This would seem to go against expectation. But while the lightning avoided the updraft cores, it became more frequent around the cores as the storm grew stronger. Dye says no one knows sure why, but the answer probably lies in the microphysics of ice and hail formation, the separation of charges as these bodies grow and move past each other, and how they are transported inside the storms by vertical and horizontal winds. Scientists discuss biology, safety, and statistics of lightning strikes. Poster papers on hurricanes and tornadoes summarized.
Thunderstorms generate elusive and mysterious sprites.
Preview of the 11th International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity. The French interferometer is one of several systems that have been developed in recent years to give scientists an inside view of lightning in storms. But intracloud strikes in local storms can be recorded only by the Lightning Detection and Ranging system at Kennedy Space Center and the Lightning Mapping System at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Also, when they are overhead at the right time the Lightning Imaging Sensor and the Optical Transient Detector, both in orbit, can count lightning from above the clouds. An exciting addition to this new suite of research tools would be a satellite-borne Lightning Mapping Sensor, under study at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center, that would observe the Earth continually from geostationary orbit.