Site-specific Nowcasting of Lightning Hazards

Thunderstorms and lightning pose a safety risk to people spending time outdoors for recreation or professional reasons. Lightning strikes can seriously injure people and possibly result in death. Thus, timely warnings of imminent lightning threats are essential for ensuring people's safety during outdoor activities.

We have been working with the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) for the past decade to develop capabilities that enable timely warnings of lightning threats for people and material involved in outdoor testing at the Army test ranges. More recently, we have begun working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to address the lightning safety of ramp and airport grounds maintenance workers.

This presentation will highlight NCAR's next generation of lightning monitoring and prediction capability and discuss applications thereof. The recently enhanced system captures lightning in strong thunderstorm cores, but is able to grasp the onset of storm electrification and anvil lightning as well. The system makes beneficial use of a range of radar-based predictors, environmental information, and lightning data.

This research is supported by the ATEC and FAA. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the sponsoring agencies.