Lightning Investigation with Radar

In 1943, within two years after the first thunderstorm observations with a microwave radar (Ligda, 1951), the first published account of a lightning observation occurred, with a radar of 1.5-m wavelength (Pawsey, 1957). About the same time, Shono (1947) reported detection of lightning with a 4-m wavelength radar in Japan. The general method of lightning observation, which has been followed by many subsequent investigators, was to direct a fixed radar beam above the most vertically developed region of thunderstorms in order to avoid strong backscattering signal from precipitation that masks the lightning echoes. The first photographs of lightning echoes were made in 1949, using a 10-cm wavelength radar at MIT (Ligda, 1950).