When lightning 



continued 



spread over the size of the city of 

 Raleigh, the energy of lightning could 

 be as much as the atomic bombs of 

 Hiroshima and Nagasaki." 



Lightning comes in several forms, 

 and it's named according to where the 

 discharge takes place. 



We're probably most familiar with the 

 type that occurs between the cloud 

 and Earth. But the discharge may also 

 take place within a cloud or between 

 clouds, without making contact with the 

 ground. 



Heat lightning is the term used loose- 

 ly to describe lightning that is so far 

 away that we can't hear its thunder. 



Photo by Dave Eichorn 



"To somebody under that lightning, it 

 sure wasn't heat lightning," Eichorn says. 



With thunderstorm season upon us, 

 you can be your own forecaster simply 

 by observing a storm, Eichorn says. 



The more intense it is, the more 

 cloud-to-Earth lightning you will see, he 

 says. If the cloud-to-Earth lightning 

 begins to lessen and you see lightning 

 only in the clouds, the storm is prob- 

 ably weakening, Eichorn says. 



"Generally, the more lightning you 

 have, the worse the storm," Eichorn says. 



You can estimate the distance be- 

 tween you and a lightning flash by 

 counting the seconds between seeing 

 the flash and hearing the thunder, 

 Eichorn says. 



For every second you count, add 

 1,000 feet. For example, if it takes five 



Chasing 

 lightning 



Dave Eichorn, a forecaster with a 

 Raleigh television station, has a fascina- 

 tion for thunderstorms and especially 

 lightning. 



Before coming to Raleigh, Eichorn 

 worked in Oklahoma. "I saw some 

 thunderstorms that were absolutely in- 

 credible out there," he says. 



Nearby transmitting towers made a 

 great target for lightning, Eichorn says. 

 And a lightning detection system al- 



seconds for the sound of the thunder to 

 reach you, the lightning is about a mile 

 away. 



Studying lightning remains a difficult 

 task for meteorologists. Lightning 

 detection systems have been devel- 

 oped to help predict storms and pin- 

 point hot spots of lightning activity. 



And Saxena says scientists know 

 how to "seed" clouds so that they don't 

 produce hail or electricity. But general- 

 ly, the cost of such a process is pro- 

 hibitive, he says. 



So far, no one has figured out how to 

 harness the potential energy in a 

 thunderstorm. 



"Maybe another Ben Franklin can 

 put lightning to something useful," Sax- 

 ena says. 



lowed him to know where the storms 

 were going to be. And most important, 

 lightning occurs most frequently there 

 at night, when it makes a brilliant 

 display against a black background. 



He was so taken by the flashy elec- 

 trical displays that he began trying to 

 capture the sight on film. 



"When my shift was over, I'd hop in 

 the car and, with the help of the light- 

 ning detection system, I'd go where the 

 storm was," Eichorn says. 



"It was like fishing for bass. Once you 

 find one storm, there are usually others 

 in the area. We used to chase them, 

 and I'd take pictures." 



After experimenting with his camera 

 and film, he learned that if he kept the 

 shutter open for 60 to 90 seconds at a 

 time, he would eventually capture the 

 sight on film. Now, Eichorn has a large 

 spiral notebook filled with plastic 

 sleeves of color slides of lightning. 



At this point, Eichorn would warn 

 folks not to try this experiment at home. 



He knows lightning can kill, and he 

 has a healthy respect for it. 



"I'm pretty brave with lightning- 

 braver than I should be," Eichorn says. 



