The Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, has an app that provides live predictions on the likelihood of lightning occurring in a specific area within 7, 14, or 21 minutes. How do they predict such an unpredictable event like a thunderstorm?
In: Physics
It is probably not “physics” at all. It is just observation and statistics.
Lightning occurs because of a buildup of charge within the atmosphere suddenly being released, and most commonly this will happen in storms due to the greater movement of air transferring more charge. Lightning is very bright and it is possible to even see it from space. In fact there are satellites that continuously image Earth looking for lighting strikes so we can get live data on when and where they happen.
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that if lighting has struck in a particular area 10 times in the last half hour then the chances are fairly high that it will strike in the area at some point in the next half hour, right? Certainly more likely than a different area which hasn’t had any strikes in the last hour.
They don’t really need any other information to start working out live predictions and probabilities. They don’t need physics simulations, they don’t need to parse complex meteorological data (although they could).
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