Variations in thunderstorm severity in Great Britain

✍ Scribed by J. S. Forrest

• Book ID: 104570748
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1950
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 443 KB
• Volume: 76
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0035-9009
• DOI: 10.1002/qj.49707632903

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The paper gives an account of variations in thunderstorm severity in Great Britain based on statistics of breakdowns caused by lightning on the Grid system during the 14‐year period 1934 ‐ 1947. Data are given for the seasonal and diurnal variations and for the fluctuations from year to year. The breakdown data are compared with the corresponding statistics of thunderstorm‐days, and it is shown that the thunderstorm‐day observations, if used directly, do not give an adequate indication of storm severity. It is proposed to introduce a “severity index” (s) such that the severity is proportional to T^s^, where T is the number of thunderstorm‐days. For the data examined, s has values of 1.4 and 1.9.