Study on the Characteristics of Intense Lightning Activity During a Spring Severe Thunderstorm Process in Southern China

Intense lightning associated with severe convective weather can cause significant hazards. Exploring the patterns of lightning density is of great significance for lightning protection and disaster mitigation. This study examines a severe thunderstorm event occurring in central and southern China at the end of March 2024, through analyzing the spatial distribution, polarities, density levels of lightning. Results show that this thunderstorm event lasted approximately 20 hours, during which the peak lightning frequency was about 9 flashes per square kilometer. The average proportion of positive to total cloud-toground lightning flashes was 15.13%. The numbers of grid cells experiencing dense lightning activity categorized as blue, yellow, and orange levels were 743, 167, and 6, respectively. Lightning density levels can to some extent indicate the risk of lightninginduced tripping in power grids. The study underscores the importance of fine-scale lightning monitoring for disaster mitigation, though further research is needed to elucidate the microphysical mechanisms driving intense lightning activity.