The Benefits of Using Total Lightning for Safety Alerts

The Benefits of Using Total Lightning for Safety Alerts

Total Lightning Data and Real-Time Severe Storm Prediction — Conference papers written by Stan Heckman and Charlie Liu (check out Fig. 12 + 13)

The Relationship between Total Cloud Lightning Behavior and Radar-Derived Thunderstorm Structure — A 2013 paper that finds that IC flash rates are better at predicting hail storms than CG flash rates, but about the same for severe wind

Utilizing Total Lightning Information to Diagnose Convective Trends — A 2010 BAMS paper (high profile) that concludes: “Preliminary studies and forecaster surveys suggest that the inclusion of total lightning information provides a unique insight into storm-scale structures that may be crucial to increasing warning lead times and severe storm discernment, especially in situations where radar and other observational datasets provide conflicting signals or partial information.”

Lightning Decision Support Using VHF Total Lightning Mapping and NLDN Cloud-to-Ground Data in North Alabama — A 2017 conference paper that is directly related to alerting rings for Total and CG lightning. In the abstract they state: “Approximately 75% of the time, the total lightning observations from the North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array provide additional lead time on the first cloud-to-ground flash…”. FYI, the NALMA is a total lightning detector. They found the median additional lead-time provided by Total over CG-only was between 9 and 17 minutes, with the 75th percentile being as high as 36 minutes earlier (see Table 1)