Electric Hurricanes

[Boffa Jones Veteran]

Electric Hurricanes

01.09.2006

Three of the most powerful hurricanes of 2005 were filled with mysterious lightning.

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January 9, 2006: The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.

Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms--Rita, Katrina, and Emily--did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.

Richard Blakeslee of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (GHCC) in Huntsville, Alabama, was one of a team of scientists who explored Hurricane Emily using NASA's ER-2 aircraft, a research version of the famous U-2 spy plane. Flying high above the storm, they noted frequent lightning in the cylindrical wall of clouds surrounding the hurricane's eye. Both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning were present, "a few flashes per minute," says Blakeslee.

Above: The eye of Hurricane Emily photographed from the International Space Station. [More]

"Generally there's not a lot of lightning in the eye-wall region," he says. "So when people see lightning there, they perk up -- they say, okay, something's happening."

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Indeed, the electric fields above Emily were among the strongest ever measured by the aircraft?s sensors over any storm. "We observed steady fields in excess of 8 kilovolts per meter," says Blakeslee. "That is huge--comparable to the strongest fields we would expect to find over a large land-based 'mesoscale' thunderstorm."

The flight over Emily was part of a 30-day science data-gathering campaign in July 2005 organized and sponsored by NASA headquarters to improve scientists' understanding of hurricanes. Blakeslee and others from NASA, NOAA and 10 U.S. universities traveled to Costa Rica for the campaign, which is called "Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes." From the international airport near San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, they could fly the ER-2 to storms in both the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean. They combined ER-2 data with data from satellites and ground-based sensors to get a comprehensive view of each storm.

Rita and Katrina were not part of the campaign. Lightning in those storms was detected by means of long-distance sensors on the ground, not the ER-2, so less is known about their electric fields.

Above: The ER-2 en route to a hurricane. [More]

Nevertheless, it is possible to note some similarities: (1) all three storms were powerful: Emily was a Category 4 storm, Rita and Katrina were Category 5; (2) all three were over water when their lightning was detected; and (3) in each case, the lightning was located around the eye-wall.

What does it all mean? The answer could teach scientists something new about the inner workings of hurricanes.

Actually, says Blakeslee, the reason most hurricanes don't have lightning is understood. "They're missing a key ingredient: vertical winds."

Within thunderclouds, vertical winds cause ice crystals and water droplets (called "hydrometeors") to bump together. This "rubbing" causes the hydrometeors to become charged. Think of rubbing your socked feet across wool carpet--zap! It's the same principle. For reasons not fully understood, positive electric charge accumulates on smaller particles while negative charge clings to the larger ones. Winds and gravity separate the charged hydrometeors, producing an enormous electric field within the storm. This is the source of lightning.

A hurricane's winds are mostly horizontal, not vertical. So the vertical churning that leads to lightning doesn't normally happen.

Above: An infrared GOES 11 satellite image of Hurricane Emily. Yellow + and - symbols mark lightning bolts detected by the North American Lightning Detection Network. The green line traces the path of the ER-2. Click to view electric fields measured by the aircraft during the flight.

Lightning has been seen in hurricanes before. During a field campaign in 1998 called CAMEX-3, scientists detected lightning in the eye of hurricane Georges as it plowed over the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The lightning probably was due to air forced upward -- called "orographic forcing" -- when the hurricane hit the mountains.

"Hurricanes are most likely to produce lightning when they're making landfall," says Blakeslee. But there were no mountains beneath the "electric hurricanes" of 2005?only flat water.

It's tempting to think that, because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But Blakeslee says that this explanation is too simple. "Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning," he says. "There must be something else at work."

It's too soon to say for certain what that missing factor is. Scientists will need months to digest reams of data gathered in this year's campaign before they can hope to have an answer.

Says Blakeslee, "We still have a lot to learn about hurricanes."

SOURCE

[vincent]

Not to get off topic but i find it fascinating on how spiral galaxies and hurricanes share the same shape and/or formation in that they both are spiral.

[Boffa Jones Veteran]

Not to get off topic but i find it fascinating on how spiral galaxies and hurricanes share the same shape and/or formation in that they both are spiral.

Riddle me this then ripgut... Under which situations is there lightning in a spiral galaxy?

[vincent]

Riddle me this then ripgut... Under which situations is there lightning in a spiral galaxy?

I doubt that lightning exists in a galaxy, although there are bursts from earth that eject out into space.

I forgot what these are called, but i'm sure it can be googled, i think you read too much into that post of mines, i didn't state that they share the same properties (as far as lightning is concerned) I just find it weird that both are spiral in shape. That's all......

[Boffa Jones Veteran]

I doubt that lightning exists in a galaxy, although there are bursts from earth that eject out into space.

I forgot what these are called, but i'm sure it can be googled, i think you read too much into that post of mines, i didn't state that they share the same properties (as far as lightning is concerned) I just find it weird that both are spiral in shape. That's all......

LOL dont worry man I was 100% joking with my post.

[kennyout]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Lig...he_Solar_System

It has been recently revealed that most lightning emits an intense burst of X-rays and/or gamma-rays which seem to be produced during the stepped-leader and dart-leader phases just before the stroke becomes visible. The X-ray bursts typically have a total duration of less than 100 microseconds and have energies extending up to nearly a few hundred keV. The presence of these high-energy events match and support the "runaway breakdown" theory, and were discovered through the examination of rocket-triggered lightning, and from satellite monitoring of natural lightning.

Now ask yourself this....what else releases excessive X-rays.... :whistle:

Black Holes...., they get spinning disks of matter...gas/ect....what's the chances because its space is compacted around it, that there is enough "density" of matter around that the friction of stuff spinning into the event horizon(let alone nebulas) that would produce something other than the poles bursts?....

X-ray Lightning! :devil: :shiftyninja: :woot: :whistle:

even though light cannot escape(or nothing), who is to say that the changing movements/compression would not result in sudden lightning charge changes between areas...

[Hum]

;) All hurricanes and tornados are electromagnetic vortexes in nature -- they are not formed by '4 winds colliding'. Winds are a result of matter being drawn to the center of the force. It is natural for hurricanes to create both water and lightning within them. Energy is being slowed down and formed into matter.

Invisible vortexes exists everywhere, from the smallest scale to unimaginable large versions -- the microcosom to the macrocosom. In the future Earth science will learn to control and use these vortexes. (However, humans must develope spiritually first.)

There is indeed a connection between tornados, hurricanes, volcanos, solar systems, and galaxies -- Resonating electromagnetic fields, a primary creative force in the Universe. :happy:

[Boffa Jones Veteran]

;) All hurricanes and tornados are electromagnetic vortexes in nature -- they are not formed by '4 winds colliding'. Winds are a result of matter being drawn to the center of the force. It is natural for hurricanes to create both water and lightning within them. Energy is being slowed down and formed into matter.

Invisible vortexes exists everywhere, from the smallest scale to unimaginable large versions -- the microcosom to the macrocosom. In the future Earth science will learn to control and use these vortexes. (However, humans must develope spiritually first.)

There is indeed a connection between tornados, hurricanes, volcanos, solar systems, and galaxies -- Resonating electromagnetic fields, a primary creative force in the Universe. :happy:

Again, I have to ask do you have any sources at all for what you are saying?

[voazo03]

The guy reading the audio sounds like such a tool. Haha.