An Evaluation of the Area Thunderstorm Monitor in an Operational Application
Abstract Medium frequency sferics detection equipment has been used successfully for 10 years. Its usefulness is based an the finding that 95% of the alarms occurred when ≥30 dB(Z) radar echoes were present on a WSR-57 radar. The range functions of the alarms were found to be accurate to within 10% for 90% of the data. The false alarm rate was 4%. Eighty percent of the time that General Increase alarms occurred there were increases in both echo reflectivity and cloud top altitude.