Comprehensive study of regional thunderstorm activity in a wide frequencie range

In this paper we discuss the results of our studies of the regional storm activity, in particular the spatial characteristics of thunderstorms passing through the region in order to develop the revised criteria for interconnection of electrical and meteorological phenomena. The Lightning Detection Network in Nizhny Novgorod region dedicated to the academic research of meteorological phenomena has being developed. Three Boltek StormTracker PCI-Receivers with LTS-2 Timestamp Cards with GPS and lightning detectors were integrated to PC-workstations running the GNU/Linux operating system. These PC-workstations with integrated lightning detectors were installed at three observation points placed in Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod region. The PC-workstations are left on permanently in order to monitor lightning activity at all times. Each has wired Internet connection allowing almost instantaneous data transfer to a central server running MySQL database in GNU/Linux. Information collected in database is processed by a program developed by us called the LDN-processor. The LDN-processor analyses the data from each client and performs event triangulations using time-of-arrival and direction-finding algorithms. It uses the correlation analysis.