How close is too close?

[Dale.Reid]

We are having an unusual amount of rain and storms with a lot of lightning yesterday and today here in Wisconsin, in the upper midwest of the USA.  The 'train' effect of a stationary positioned front with a lot of energy from the south is positioned so wave after wave of some pretty hot cells has moved over me one right after another.  Usually there is a pause of about 30 to 60 minutes and then along comes another one.

Rain total is now 5.51", with more expected.  Too wet.

But the position of the storm train across my location has provided many cells with lots of cloud to ground lightning to watch.  It is interesting that the main path is about ten miles south of me, although some move by over me, too.

One thing I noticed is that my station's data is used for strike plots up to about 3 to 5 miles away, but anything closer than that shows no participation and many other stations' data used to plot the strike.  This was very consistent all afternoon and evening as I watched.

I wonder if the algorithms screen out extremely close strikes, with some sort of physics being that super close strikes are not well captured with the stations? 

Just curious if anyone has had their station participate in calculating strikes just a few miles or even less?

Oh, the expanding circles for predicting the onset of thunder was very easy to evaluate with hundreds  of chances to watch the circle touch my station and the thunder, if heard, was amazingly close in timing to the estimate provided by the circle.  Very nice.

Dale

[RichoAnd]

Few at 10km - more at 20km ,and many over 25km
Your antenna is optimized for 50km and up, so is filters and the detection system.
At 0 - 10km, you see hundreds of small discharges in clouds and preloads - for your receiver it is seen as noise.

[Andy Timms]

Few at 10km - more at 20km ,and many over 25km
Your antenna is optimized for 50km  and up, so is filters and the detection system.
At 0 - 10km, you see hundreds of small discharges in clouds and preloads - for your receiver it is seen as noise.

RichoAnd

I am interested in your comment about 'small discharges in clouds'. Some time ago I was out walking when it was clear that a storm was beginning to form more or less overhead. At this time I heard a few faint rumbles of thunder which I am sure were overhead. I have never heard this since. I emailed the Met Office (in the UK) about this but received no reply. Could this be me hearing the result of these small discharges?

Best Regards, Andy

[chevyman142000]

Dale, I've noticed the same thing with my station up and running in Sun Prairie. Also, too much rain!!

[Dale.Reid]

Richo,
thanks for the inner design considerations.

I didn't know if the signal was so strong that it would swamp the detection circuitry or not, and also if there were a timing consideration but when the signal is received and a time stamp from the gps is obtained I guess that part of it makes no difference. 

Interesting that the distance to strike was taken into account for the antenna and filters.  thanks.

[piepants]

I saw a few close strikes near my station the other night, I think one was around 15 kilometres (9.3 miles). This signal was 25km away and caused clipping, but surprisingly it was still used.