--Original Message-- Although I have no qualitative data to support this theory, the thought is that the tall tower and antenna elements dissipate to ground static charges in the vicinity of the towe
And, as it happens, the folks who study lightning for a living DO have quantitative data, and it's not borne out. As K1TTT mentioned, you have to have many years of data, because local variability is
There are still people (companies too) who support the theory that lightning strikes can be prevented by installing suitable devices to dissipate the charge before it can build up. I believe it is st
Which makes me wonder if we will ever really understand lightning. - - - This reminded me that years ago on a lot adjacent to ours, a neighbouring apartment building with a TV tower mounted on the r
I think they are more commonly called "feeders." I thought that the most common lightning strike starts from the cloud and goes down, but some might go opposite. I've read that the feeder grows in s
the charge separation in the cloud is what attracts the charge to the ground under it. they are called 'leaders'. In 'normal' lightning it is a 'negatively charged downward leader' that comes out of
I occasionally scan articles about lightning, but would never consider myself anything of an expert on it. And lots of what I've read, I've surely forgotten over time. It's not part of my main line o
A lot of lightning phenomena have very wide statistical distributions. That is why we tell utilities to use at least 10 years of data when doing any serious analysis of lightning related outages. I
And a "new" theory says that Gamma ray bursts may be responsible for the "super" bolts. The idea is the ionizing radiation aids in a cascade of charged particles creating discharges well beyond that
I do also see the multiple strokes in the daytime too. I see your point, and I'm not claiming my observations are scientific or foolproof, but I have seen a distinct difference at the same time of d
the particles aren't actually moving, it's charge flowing. Just as the electrons in a wire don't actually move at the speed of light, though the EM wave does. ________________________________________
I always liked the pool ball analogy. You put a row of pool balls together so each one touches its neighbors. Then strike one end of the string with the q-ball. The q-ball stops, the string appears s
Actually, in this case the electrons are moving. In the leader the charge from the cloud creates an ionized channel which allows the charge to flow from the cloud to the end of the leader. As the ch