Ham radio on the cheap, encouraging newcomers to the hobby, and a bit of science.
Saturday, 25 April 2020
Thunderstorm-induced Es breaks out.
Pretty good evidence for today's Es up to 28MHz being produced by thunderstorm activity (you can start your research into this in places such as this paper, and this one, but you can only read the abstract without paying):
Not so sure about the evidence for this particular opening John. The half way point for you to the south of Spain is over the Bay of Biscay, no sign of lightning.
For the stations in the the south-east of France, the lightning would need to be over the north of France.
That's not to say that lightning doesn't impact Sp-E, just not so sure it was today.
Well, we can never really know for sure. I don't agree about the requirement for strict geographical 'alignment' as you suggest. Gravity waves launched by the storms grow rapidly in amplitude, and quickly become shifted around by middle atmosphere winds that can reach up to ~400m/s, or 1440km/hr. Such shifting will tend to be to the west in our summer.
Not so sure about the evidence for this particular opening John. The half way point for you to the south of Spain is over the Bay of Biscay, no sign of lightning.
ReplyDeleteFor the stations in the the south-east of France, the lightning would need to be over the north of France.
That's not to say that lightning doesn't impact Sp-E, just not so sure it was today.
Well, we can never really know for sure. I don't agree about the requirement for strict geographical 'alignment' as you suggest. Gravity waves launched by the storms grow rapidly in amplitude, and quickly become shifted around by middle atmosphere winds that can reach up to ~400m/s, or 1440km/hr. Such shifting will tend to be to the west in our summer.
DeleteThat's interesting about the upper atmosphere winds, that could well move the E's well away from the original source.
ReplyDeleteIt might make for an interesting blog post.