A SUNY Oswego meteorology professor is part of a team working to understand lightning from winter storms. He’s collaborating with other scientists and students to collect and analyze data.

The research was made possible by a $1.3 million National Science Foundation grant. The Lake Effect Electrification project began in fall of 2022.

Students and scientists spent the 2022-2023 school year collecting data about lake effect snowstorms, specifically those producing lightning. They wanted to find out how lightning develops, how wind turbines trigger lightning strikes and how often they are struck.

“For wintertime lightning and other kinds of snow storms like nor'easters, there have been studies on that over the past 10 to 20 years, but particularly about what's going on with a lake effect storm or ocean effect storms, that's never been studied, really, until now, about how lightning develops in these storms,” said SUNY Oswego professor Scott Steiger. “We don't know how electricity gets developed in these clouds. So we're just kind of developing hypotheses to understand that.”

They found wind turbines east of Lake Ontario can be struck as much as once a minute during a winter storm. The field research included releasing weather balloons and then hunting them down after they fall from the sky, as well as wiping snow off of solar panels.

“Essentially, the wind turbines east of Lake Ontario has changed the lightning climatology of the eastern Lake Ontario region during the winter time,” said Steiger. “There are reports and I've talked to some people who work for the power companies that operate them, where the lightning has blown up like pieces of the turbine, like once it hits it, they do have lightning arresters on the wind turbine tips, but some of the lightning flashes, especially during the winter, are very powerful."

Steiger says they’re hoping to apply for another grant to do a part two of this project, because there were some problems with instruments and their research has brought up more questions.