**Convective asymmetries in tropical cyclones

Cloud-to-ground lightning locations from the National Lightning Detection Network were used to identify and examine regions of convection in 24 Atlantic basin tropical cyclones from 1985-1997. Large azimuthal asymmetries in flash locations were seen for both the core (inner 100 km) and outer rain band (100-300 km) regions. The focus of this work has been to examine the azimuthal pattern of lightning and its relationship to vertical wind shear and storm motion. Over 80% of the flashes in both the core and outer bands of tropical cyclones appear in the downshear quadrants of the storms, with core flashes having a downshear left and outer rain band flashes exhibiting a downshear right preference. Flashes were more frequent to the right of the track than the left, with core flashes tending to be in the right front and rain band flashes in the right rear quadrant with respect to motion.