Houston is going to be the center of some lightning research.
With its proximity to a nearly endless supply of warm, humid coastal air that breeds thunderstorms, Houston attracts more lightning than any part of Texas, with an average of more than 15 bolts striking every square mile of the city each year.
It’s not a boast-worthy title. Reaching temperatures several times hotter than the surface of the sun, lightning kills about four people in Texas a year, second only to Florida, which juts like — what else? — a lightning rod into the warm Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico waters.
Scientists now believe they can improve their predictions of which thunderstorms will produce lightning by studying the meteorological seeds within clouds that lead to ground strikes.
To accomplish this, a team of researchers, led by Texas A&M University’s Dick Orville, have finished installing a network of 12 sensors across the greater Houston area to detect electromagnetic energy within storm clouds.
The effort is not just academic as more people are killed by lightning, on average, than any other type of severe weather, and lightning causes about $2 billion a year in U.S. damage.
Foremost, Orville said, is feeding early warning information to Houston residents about cloud lightning, which can occur as much as 20 minutes before a storm produces ground strikes.
“The bottom line is that we’d like to save lives,” he said.
Cool. Now if they can figure out how to teach dogs to not freak out during thunderstorms, then we’ll really have something.