
Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General explained. “Lightning is a major hazard that claims many lives every year,” Prof.

With severe weather season approaching across the United States, the threat of lightning to the public is a prominent concern. Hear thunder? This is what you should do next “But these findings are also important to the general public as a stark reminder that lightning can strike far away from the parent source region,” Cerveny said. Randall Cerveny said, “It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we are able to observe them as lightning technology improves.” Peterson of the Space and Remote Sensing Group of Los Alamos National Laboratory said, “We are now at a place where we have excellent measurements of its many facets, which allow us to discover surprising new aspects of its behavior.”Īs technology continues to advance, experts in the field are optimistic for lightning detection of an even greater scale in the future.

The new technology provides a window into an aspect of weather which was previously elusive.

With new advances in technology, lightning scientists have been able to use Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM’s) on satellites orbiting in space to collect a larger scale of lightning data such as the new megaflash lightning records. Lightning imagery over the southern United States from the (NOAA) showing the longest horizontal lightning flash recorded via the Geostationary Lightning Mapper.
