Lightning from two national detection networks related to vertically integrated liquid and echo-top information from WSR-88D radar

Abstract

Two national cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning-detection systems were operating across the contiguous United States during 1993. These two networks are compared to each other and to WSR-88D radar information collected by the Twin Lakes, Oklahoma, radar on 9 June 1993 as a squall line moved through central Oklahoma. Next Generation Weather Radar Information Dissemination Service data are used to investigate the relationship of CG lightning to WSR-88D echo tops and vertically integrated liquid (VIL). Such relationships appear not to have been investigated in such fine time and space resolution to date. The Atmospheric Research Systems, Inc. (ARSI) time-of-arrival lightning detection system recorded nearly twice the number of positive flashes when compared with the GeoMet Data Services (GDS) direction-finder (DF) system. -from Authors