Monitoring Atmospheric Electrification for Operations and Collaborative Studies at the U.S. Army West Desert Test Center

The U.S. Army West Desert Test Center (WDTC) is located at Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah, roughly 65 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, UT. As an active test range, personnel and equipment move about the approximate 800,000-acre installation throughout the year and are subject to the meteorological hazards of outdoor testing. The WDTC Meteorology Branch maintains a three-dimensional lightning mapping array (LMA) for flash detection as well as a mesonet of Campbell Scientific CS110 electric field mills which provide charge monitoring. These observational networks are utilized by WDTC meteorologists to issue lightning watches and warnings for the protection of life and property.

The WDTC mesonet of electric field mills sampled some recent events when blowing dust and associated triboelectrification resulted in elevated ambient atmospheric charge being measured. Such data will be useful in researching electrical hazards due to blowing dust and sand versus non-hazardous conditions causing false alarms. We will highlight the data from the electric field mills and other supporting observations the blowing dust events.