An evaluation of relationships between radar-inferred kinematic and microphysical parameters and lightning flash rates in Alabama storms

Although past studies have established relations between flash rate and storm parameters, their expected performance in a variety of storm and flash rate conditions is uncertain due to sample limitations.

Radar network and lightning mapping array observations over Alabama of a large and diverse sample of 33 storms are input to hydrometeor identification, vertical velocity retrieval and flash rate algorithms to develop and test flash rate relations. When applied to this sample, prior flash rate linear relations result in larger errors overall, including often much larger bias (both over- and under-estimation) and root mean square errors compared to the new linear relations.