Hello,
I have found this video about lake Maracaibo
Video
There are storms about 140 to 160 nights a year :
Wikipedia page of the phenomenum
But when I look on the map of Blitzortung I see nothing..
Is this due to a poor coverage of the zone? But we can see some strikes elsewhere in Venezuela.
If someone has a explanation I will appriciate.
Thank you very much.
It's just a conservation measure.
The Venezuelan government has ordered rationing of the storm activity so all Bolivarians can share equally in the bounty of the electrical storms.
Like everything else, put the government in charge of anything and you get less of it.
The actual answer is that this happens frequently during droughts, like back in 2010.
Although that I recall was caused by an El Niño.
Which makes sense. No water, no storms.
Lots of Saharan dust in the air over our heads here in the Caribbean too so far this season and few storms with passing tropical waves.
We're new. I would be interested to know how the "11 stations" to confirm a strike affects reporting in sparsely covered areas. We are close enough to see that area easily along with stations in Panama and the Virgin Islands and a few much further south in Brazil. Is that enough? I don't know.
Pedro
There are probably several reasons Maracaibo /Catatumbo strokes don't present often on Blitzortung... '
The main reason would be low station density in Northeast SA, and the Caribbean.
Also... you'd want to look for the peak lightning events between certain specific times,. (see attached)
At the station distance greater than about 80 KM we have to depend on Ionospheric Bounce (Sky Wave) signals, so stations have to be at some 'reflections / skip" window to detect. These signals are distorted and delayed from the original sferic. Because the basin sits in topography with some peaks >5000M, the impulses have a hard time making it out of the geography to traverse the water, which would produce a greater distant 'ground wave' component, but station density is still too low...
....there is also some indication that, though dramatic, the "power" of an individual imipulse is generally moderate, ... also many of the strokes are C-C or Intra-Cloud, and Blitzortung currently follows only C-G strokes. One researcher indicates that the CC/IC ratio to CG was about 13:1
The WWLLN was detecting an average of 2%-20% of the strokes out of the region., with stroke power of approx 20kA. BT would approach that with a sufficient number of stations
So, currently, not enough stations are detecting a viable impulse signal with a valid time stamp to register most of thise sferics.
Waouw, I will read that: thank you very much!