Blitzortung.org Forum

Greetings all!

Just a curiosity more than anything..

Last night we had quite a wicked little storm (along with others in the area) move through my community..  There was easily a few flashes every minute (or more) for about a half-hour at least.  I know for sure there were storm cells besides the one over us, causing all sorts of lightning at the same time.

Curiously, not a single stroke was detected by ANY station, mine included (though it may have been too close).

I did observe that all the lightning appeared to be inter, and intra cloud and very little, if any cloud to ground.

I wonder if that makes any difference?  I know that storms earlier in the day in my area were quite accurately picked-up, so it's not an issue of lack of coverage..


Ideas, thoughts?   Makes me wonder if we are missing a lot more strikes than we realize...

Cheers
Hal
Station ID #1384

Weak stroke might not be detected in your area...

Typically, The current Blitzortung systems are much more efficient at detecting Cloud to Ground lightning... (as are many systems, regardless of advertising). Cloud to ground strokes are of longer impulse durations, often much stronger, and are typically Vertically Polarized.  Whereas most  inter-cloud, intra-cloud strokes appear to be Horizontally polarized.  There is a possibility, especially with the soon to be released System Blue to detect Horizontally polarized sferics utilizing the third H field channel, with a horizontally polarized loop along with two Vertically polarized loops, as is standard for the RED and Green Systems. 

Remembering, with the current station density, and system processing, that a bare minimum of locators is required to identify an impulse (that varies from region to region, but the very least number is 4). Stations greater than, let's suggest 150 km, have little hope of getting adequate time stamps and trigger levels of the very short duration, weaker, horizontally polarized IC impulses at distance. And stations <50 km, if operating typically, may go into interference mode at stop sending with with very high sferic activity levels.

Cheers!
Mike