Hi
Many of you know I am interested in meteorology from a gliding
perspective through my (now terminated) Darling Downs weekly forecasts.
One of the things that concerns us as glider pilots is real time storm
tracking as thunderstorms present significant dangers. As a level 2
instructor in charge of the day's flying, I have frequently watched
storms developing and used my judgement to determine if and when to
close up operations with sufficient time to get everything safely away
before the storm hits.
Whilst the BoM weather radar is great (and having it on a smart phone
with me at all times is particularly great), it is about 10min behind
reality and only gives one (rain density) perspective of storms.
Lightning frequency, according to the UK Met Office
(http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/i/r/Fact_sheet_No._2.pdf) is a
useful measure of storm intensity:-
There are three categories, these are:
. Slight --- rate of 1 flash per minute
. Moderate --- rate of 2 to 3 flashes per minute
. Heavy --- rate of 4 or more flashes per minute
(It's worth noting that the link between lightning intensity and storm
intensity is not as simple as this document suggests from my current
researches, but I'm still investigating this issue for better information).
Whilst there are services that track and make available real time
lightning intensity information, they are not cost free. There is
however a (relatively) new "open source" system that is growing and is
free. You are however encouraged to join it as a contributor by buying
and installing a lightning detector that links to the internet.
The network is available at
http://www.lightningmaps.org/realtime?lang=en (real time delay is
usually < 5s) and at
http://www.blitzortung.org/Webpages/index.php?lang=en&page_0=20 (for
data that give time history information in a 2 hour sliding window.
The interesting thing from a gliding club perspective is that (a) many
gliding clubs now operate an Internet link and (b) hardware to become
part of the lightning network is relatively cheap (see
http://www.blitzortung.org/Webpages/index.php?lang=en&page=3).
As you can see from http://www.lightningmaps.org/extra/coverage?lang=en,
the coverage in Australia is principally around our major cities (as
might be expected). This puts gliding clubs, located outside of capital
cities in an interesting position as they are potential beneficiaries of
this information and well placed to be useful contributors to the
systems as well.
I'd like to suggest that clubs think about joining this system as
contributors as well as users.
--
*Note: I am changing my email address - please only use my gmail address
from now on! *
*
*Robert Hart [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>*
+61 438 385 533
*
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