(2017-02-03, 13:08)Gandalf Wrote: Hi, I currently live in Mauritius and we are in the middle of a thunderstorm at the moment but the lightning is not appearing on the map. Our nearest detector would seem to be in Reunion, about 200-300km away. Any ideas why? Thank you.
Sure... One or two stations won't 'register a stroke... to detect a stroke, a Time of Arrival / Time of Group Arrival network requires a minimum of 4 stations to detect and supply data relating to a sferic. Unfortunately, we don't have enough volunteers off Africa or on Indian Ocean Islands for example, 'seeing' Mauritius. If the strokes are powerful enough, and the Ionosphere 'active', your strokes could be reflected to many of the Australian, Asian, and other areas, in which they could be 'detected', but the location accuracy wouldn't be that good. Simply said, enough stations aren't receiving those sferics to provide data of quality that would allow 'registering'.
The more stations receiving a sferic, beyond the minimum of 4, the better. For areas such as North America, the 'normal' minimum number of stations to locate is usually 8-12, because there are more stations, more stations better accuracy, etc.
Another possibility, many of the impulses may be intra-cloud or cloud to cloud, and these are more difficult to detect.
Cheers!
Mike
