When Lightning Strikes

ctwxman writes "For most of the United States (sorry West Coast), this is the season for lightning. It is as powerful as it is spectacular to look at. It is destructive too - by itelf or through the hail, straight line winds and tornadoes that often accompany it. As someone who forecasts the weather, I'm often asked about lightning. As you might imagine, there's plenty to see about lightning on the Internet. The conditions necessary and a little bit of the physics behind lightning are explained by Jeff Haby, a meteorologist (one of my professors actually) at Mississippi State University. Once forecasters get a handle on what's going on, they put the word out through the Storm Prediction Center. Regular outlooks are issued by SPC for severe storms. Once those storms rear their ugly heads, they're followed with mesoscale discussions looking at the active areas. The Storm Prediction Center is also the place where Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Watches are issued and storm related damage reports are compiled. Lots of hobbyists like to track lightning strikes on their own, and there's equipment available to do just that. Getting hit by lightning is never fun, though not always fatal. National Geographic chronicled an amazing story of a lightning strike, and rescue, on Grand Teton."

Comments

Numerical Weather Prediction and others

[thedogcow]

As someone who is finishing his BS in Meteorology from a reputable university that teaches meteorology (Univ of Oklahoma), I am really sick and tired of people not giving credit to meteorologists. First, I want to set some facts out:

1) People on TV usually do not have a BS in meteorology. They are usually journalists, hence, they have not taken the required math and physics that one needs in order to understand that air behaves like a fluid in a nonlinear fashion. Please take the time to distinguish between people that have science degrees and people who do not.

2) Weather Prediction. For anyone that complains about how meteorologists cannot predict the weather, I would like to see you apply your skills of solving Partial Differential Equations that are extremely complicated in a Lagrangian reference frame. Numerical weather models have to approximate solutions to the complicated PDEs and even have to reduce important terms (Scale Analysis) that, of course, play a significant role in the long term.

3) The Storm Prediction Center is located in Norman, OK. As an undergraduate... I love to learn about the vertical tilting and stretching of a baroclinically induced horizontal vorticity zone... i.e.. Tornadogenesis. SPC saves lives and employees people that have masters in meteorology. They are highly qualified and are not the usual crapfest that you see on The Weather Channel or local news stations.

Moof!