Tall Structures as Recurrent Lightning Spots in the inner tropics

Abstract:
This work determines Elevated Structures (ES’s) correspondence with Recurrent Lightning Spots (RLS). The starting point is the location of 616 elevated structures in northeastern Colombia, for which two parameters were studied to asso-ciate them with RLS: lightning recurrence between 2014 and 2021 and the average ground strike point density variation (NSG). It was found that 8.12% of ES’s corresponds to RLS, and more than 50% of RLS are located outside areas with high NSG values. The current distributions show that currents of high magnitudes are related to RLS. In addition, ES’s for which Q3>24.6 kA are more likely to be classified as RLS.