Winter lightning on Japan Sea coast-lightning striking frequency to tall structures

The nature of lightning strikes on tall structures on the coast of the Japan Sea in winter has been observed with automatically triggered camera and current measurements. It is shown that the frequency of winter lightning striking tall structures is much higher than that of summer lightning and it increases proportionally to the height of structures. Sometimes lightning strikes several tall structures simultaneously. Statistics of the striking frequency, striking angle, and the leader length of the lightning discharge are presented