Combining the two data sets showed where lightning was relative to updrafts and downdrafts. The main reflector for a Doppler radar, one of the principal tools for peering inside severe storms. 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.