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Tabs on Lightning
Fri Feb 18, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Lightning strikes the United States over 20 million times a year and scientists can track
the location and strength of every single bolt. It's called the National Lightning
Detection Network.
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.
Only about 20 percent of lightning hits the ground, but when it strikes, it strikes hard. In
the United States, 75 to 100 people are killed every year by lightning. Hundreds more
are injured.
Lightning also sparks half of all forest fires, torches over 30,000 homes and fries over
100,000 computers a year. Power utilities are especially hard hit. Lightning causes
thirty percent of electric outages, costing companies almost one billion dollars a
year.
That's why, in 1983, the utility industry funded a project to track cloud-to-ground
lightning. By better understanding the spectacular phenomenon, they hoped to better
protect their electrical generating and transmission equipment. Six years later, the
National Lightning Detection Network blanketed the nation, monitoring every lightning
bolt touching down in the continental United States.
The sensors use antennas to detect lightning the same way AM radios can pick up
bolts in a thunderstorm. The sensors record the location, strength and polarity of each
strike. The computer coordinated network has recorded almost a quarter of a billion
flashes since it was born.
The network is now run by a private company that sells the information to the National
Weather Service, local weather stations, the airline industry and power companies.
You can check out current lightning conditions around the US at their website which is
www.lightningstorm.com.
In case you're wondering, central Florida between Tampa and Orlando is the nation's
lightning rod. In this corridor, lightning strikes some square mile areas more than 20
times a year.
Thanks today to writer George Homsy ("Home-zee") of Canadaigua, New York. The
Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory and is supported
generously by Subaru of America.
Today's Links
National Weather Service
www.lightningstorm.com
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