Hurricane Aletta an Electric Sight as Eyewall Lightning Detected by GOES Satellite During Rapid Intensification

Hurricane Aletta's rapid intensification was accompanied by numerous lightning strikes detected by a relatively new sensor on the GOES-East satellite.

(MORE: Hurricane Central)

A visible satellite loop of Aletta near the time it reached Category 4 intensity Friday morning showed a number of lightning strikes, showing up as purple-white splotches, in its eastern eyewall and outer rainbands.  

At the time, Hurricane Aletta was centered just under 500 miles south of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

A longer infrared satellite loop from Thursday evening through Friday morning showed multiple rounds of lightning in the eyewall and outer rainbands.

In just 24 hours, Aletta went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane, doubling its maximum sustained winds (70 mph to 140 mph) by the 9 a.m. MDT Friday National Hurricane Center advisory. 

(MORE: Why Some Hurricanes Rapidly Intensify, While Others Do Not)

The lightning was detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), a sensor placed on NOAA's GOES-East satellite first launched into space in November 2016, allowing global monitoring of in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning for the first time.

A companion satellite, GOES-17, is now in orbit and will begin monitoring the eastern Pacific Ocean and western North America later in 2018.

A Forecast Tool?

The relationship between lightning and tropical cyclone intensification has been an ongoing area of research for decades.

However, Landsea wrote in an NHC FAQ page that based on prior studies the key to forecasting a period of intensification may be the change or a sudden burst of lightning in the eyewall.

An early 2018 study of Hurricane Maria's lightning by Dr. Alexandre Fierro of the University of Oklahoma, found that lightning in Maria's inner core increased both during the beginning and ending of an intensification cycle. 

Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013 was found to have produced 200,000 lightning flashes in less than four days as it approached a catastrophic strike in the Philippines, according to an analysis by Antti Pessi, a research scientist at Vaisala Inc.

In January 2015, lightning in the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Bansi was seen from the International Space Station as it was over the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar.

(MORE: 15 Most Iconic Hurricane Images of All-Time)

Perhaps Hurricane Aletta's lightning will help shed some perspective for forecasters going forward.

Undoubtedly, the GLM on GOES-East and on what will become GOES-West will offer a treasure trove of data for future analysis to help tackle the difficult forecast challenge of rapid intensification.

Not to mention giving meteorologists and weather geeks some incredible imagery.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to The Weather Channel podcast on Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.