Dear authors: Hi, I'm interested in learning whether you've noticed from the literature or from your own research, anomalous lightning strike activity around turbines based on land. I'm specifically interested in evidence of C-G strikes that do not hit the turbines but strike the Earth sufficiently close to the base of the turbine structures that cause lightning physicists and meteorologists to ask..."why didn't the lightning hit the prominent infrastructure rising above the ground, presumably a more likely target to hit?" I'm not specifically interested only in wind turbines, but any examples you may be familiar with of lightning bypassing nearby infrastructure and instead striking the ground where no obvious competing source of streamers exist (i.e. turbines, power lines, local topography, pipelines, etc.).
My interest in this information is to further document additional examples of how lightning can bypass attractive infrastructure in favor of more attractive geological features. We have documented how geology can influence: where lightning strikes; the distribution and frequency of positive and negative lightning strikes and the lightning attributes associated with these strikes.
Thanks for your assistance in this matter. Keep up the good work.
Louis Berent
It has been widely documented in the literature how lightning strikes can hit (for instance) the body of a tall tower rather than its tip. Similarly, lightning strikes in the vicinity of a wind turbine do not necessarily need to strike it. In Article On the estimation of the lightning incidence to offshore wind farms
, we show that the attraction zone of wind turbines to downward leaders is also limited, and can be relatively small for low return stroke peak currents. Downward leaders outside that attraction zone will bypass the turbine and strike the ground.