Question regarding lightning frequency and type in thunderstorms.?

A couple of days ago, there was a cluster of severe thunderstorms which produced quite a bit of hail here in the Chicago area. I even managed to recover a 1" diameter hailstone on my property. Odd thing was... there was virtually no cloud-to-ground lightning activity at all. There was quite a bit of intracloud lightning however, just no CG strikes. Other times, there are non-severe thunderstorms with CG strikes left-and-right hitting trees and blowing transformers up. And then there are times when there are storms with torrential rainfall and there is very little CG and intracloud lightning.

What determines lightning frequency in thunderstorms as well as the ratio between IC/CG lightning? Easy ten points for meteorologists (especially word-salad intolerant charlatan hunters) for this simple question!

Michel Verheughe2015-06-11T03:27:59Z

Favorite Answer

Hello, I am the world-salad charlatan your meteorologist is hunting! ;-)
From what I read, nobody really knows the mechanism of a thunderstorm. Some believe the trigger is cosmic radiations. Whenever I am to fly my little aircraft, I see sometimes in the TAF (aviation forecast) something like PROB30 CB TS, which means: 30 percent probability to see cumulonimbus developing into thunderstorm. In my experience, I have never seen the chances to be more than 40 percent. I then conclude that thunderstorms are very, very difficult to predict. Last Sunday, I was at Hamar, an airfield north of Oslo and the forecast was for thunderstorms from midday. I then got up at 6 AM to fly two and half hours home in a strong headwind but Sunday didn't see any thunderstorms at all. I could have slept much longer! ;-)

Anyway, I have no idea how we can predict the frequency of cloud-to-cloud vs. cloud-to-ground. Perhaps TQ knows but I just wanted to give you a piece of my word salad. ;-)

51

Related Questions

Jehovah's Witnesses only: Question regarding Satan's attacks?Question regarding euthanasia due to aggression?Do you like Thunderstorms and Lightning?what type of weather is your favorite. Ex: thunderstorms, light rain, sunny, snow, blizzard etc.?Severe thunderstorms, close lightning, help!?

Trending Questions

COVID 19 VACCINE?7 answersWhat could that huge, pale orange, round thing, that was quietly gliding along in the sky in the middle of the night, mid-1960's, have been?4 answersIs there a place in the United States that gets relatively few natural disasters ?5 answersWhat does “dry heat” in arizona feel like? ?10 answersWhy is tornado alley so famous when more tornados happen in the south than places like Kansas and Oklahoma?4 answers