Summer 2018 Lightning Flashes

The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) observed about 150 million lightning flashes this summer between 8 May and 7 September, 2018.

There is an odd straight line to the east of Florida and one across South America. These are caused by a known processing issue of the GLM instrument and will be fixed soon.

Below shows the no-flash/flash mask. In other words, the pixel is green if there was any lightning flashes ever observed during the period. In this figure, you get a sense of the area the instrument is able to observe in.

Large Lightning Storm and Lots of Rain

Last night was the largest display of lightning I have ever seen! Frequent flashes of lightning illuminated the entire night sky.

A friend and I drove out to the get a better look. It was strange to see so much lightning right above out heads but not hear any thunder. The sound must have been drowned out by the heavy rain.



We were parked near Utah Lake State Park watching the storm. From the radar it looks like the storm intensified as it moved north into Salt Lake County. 

July 8, 2015 Radar 9:10 PM - 11:20 PM

It looks like the HRRR model got this storm right. The analysis soundings show much less CAPE at 6:00 PM than the amount of CAPE three hours later...

CoCoRaHS observations show nearly an inch of rain measured yesterday in parts of Salt Lake county, and farther north saw over an inch. The Salt Lake Airport reported 0.93 inches that fell in a two hour period. The NWS issued a flash flood watch. Even in Provo, there was a lot of rain running down the streets. 

The winds last night in Spanish Fork must have been strong because tree limbs about hit the truck out front...

Nothing in the wind observations sticks out to me, except for the 20 mph gusts after 20:00 (8:00 PM)

This event happened on the same day as the NWS reported that 14 people have died by lightning strikes this year, double the amount of last years (read here)
Read about lightning safety here.

Spring Thunderstorm

I was going to go mow the lawn, but then it started to rain. Then it started to rain harder, and I just had to check out the radar.

There is a nice convective thunderstorm cell moving north, northwest right over the river bottoms in Spanish Fork. The edge of the storm put 0.03 inches of rain at the house in just a few minutes (so far this month we've had 1.65 inches of rain in Spanish Fork, though I suspect that is an inaccurate measurement.)

source: Weather Underground

Lightningmaps.org is a cool website where you can see the approximate location of the lightning strikes. These detectors detect both cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-cloud strikes. Each of the colored dots are lightning strikes. The yellow dots are the most recent strikes and the orange dots are older strikes.

When a lightning strike is detected a new yellow dot appears on the map with a red circle outline. A shaded and enlarging circle expands from the strike. This is the approximate location of where thunder is heard. We could hear the thunder from this particular strike (below) just a little before the thunder front on the map reached our house.

The storm has since moved north and more lightning is striking between Provo and Orem. Several people I've talked to said the thunder in Provo was pretty loud for a few moments.

Lightning detectors are scattered all around the world. When lightning strikes they emit a low frequency radio wave that can be detected by antennas states away from the storm. Below is a map from Lightningmaps.org that show lightning in the southeast being detected from stations all acros the country. Each yellow dot circled in red are the lightning strikes. The blue lines are drawn between the lightning strike and the detector the registered the strike. Each lightning event is measured by several stations so that the location of the lightning can be determined. A good Wikipedia article about lightning detection can be found here.

source: lightningmaps.org

Looks like the storm has passed and I can go mow the lawn now :)

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In other news, I got my exam results for a qualifying exam I took last week. I passed the exam "with distinction" meaning that I can now pursue a doctorate degree in Atmospheric Science.