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Nature's original power source, a lightning bolt, contains up to a billion volts of electricity. For those living on the Great Plains, nighttime thunderstorms, chock full of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, are more common than daytime storms. An essential source of summer rain for crops, these storms also pose a potential hazard due to excessive rainfall and lightning.
To understand the causes of these stormy nights, researchers from the Plains Elevated Convection at Night project used aircraft, Doppler radar and other equipment to collect data in the upper atmosphere, the preferred mixing bowl for nighttime storms. These data provide critical information to improve heavy rainfall forecasts.Image credit: Jacob DeFlitch, Meteorologist
