Lightning hot spot may provide clues for predicting strikes

Nature : Lightning can and does strike the same place more than once. In fact, Lake Maracaibo in northern Venezuela sees some 200 strikes/km² every year. Now Ángel Muñoz of Princeton University and his colleagues plan to spend the next three years there, monitoring the atmospheric conditions and watching for lightning strikes. The goal is to develop an accurate model to predict lightning frequency months in advance, so that scientists will be able to provide warnings for local communities, industries such as oil and gas, and power grid operators. The researchers say, however, that expanding their lightning model to other parts of the world may be difficult because of the lack of long-term lightning observations and the complex effects of season, region, and climate. At least one other study has suggested that lightning frequency may increase with global warming.