Kyle Cameron Wiens

Katrina and Rita were lit up with lightning

Hurricanes generally produce very little lightning activity compared to other noncyclonic storms, and lightning is especially sparse in the eye wall and inner regions within tens of kilometers surrounding the eye [Molinari et al., 1994, 1999]. (The eye wall is the wall of clouds that encircles the eye of the hurricane.) Lightning can sometimes be detected in the outer, spiral rainbands, but the lightning occurrence rate varies significantly from hurricane to hurricane as well as within an individual hurricanes lifetime. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the U.S. Gulf coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and their distinctions were not just limited to their tremendous intensity and damage caused. They also differed from typical hurricanes in their lightning production rate.

Space- and Ground-Based Studies of Lightning Signatures

This article provides a brief survey of the space- and ground-based stud- ies of lightning performed by investigators at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The primary goal of these studies was to further understand unique light- ning signatures known as Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs). First, an overview is presented of the Fast On-orbit Recording of Transient Events (FORTE) satellite and of the ground-based Los Alamos Sferic Array (LASA). This is followed by a summary of the phenomenology, physics, and meteorological context of NBEs and NBE-related discharges. This article also discusses additional radio frequency and optical observations of lightning made by the FORTE satellite and concludes with an outlook on LANLs growing interest in the use of lightning observations in the study of severe weather and hurricane intensification.

WWLLN Data User Manual

The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) provides continuous global lightning monitoring and detection. At LANL we collect and archive these data on a daily basis. This document describes the WWLLN data, how they are collected and archived, and how to use the data at LANL.