Bolt from the blue emerging as a potent danger for Andhra Pradesh, warn experts

Intensity and frequency of lightning increasing due to global warming, they say

A file photo of a streak of lightning lighting up the night sky in Visakhapatnam.

In the last one week, 16 people died in the coastal districts after being struck by lightning.

Such deaths would continue to rise as the intensity and frequency of lightning were going to increase due to global warming and climate change, said SSVS Ramakrishna, Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, Andhra University. Lightning would be the cause of many deaths just like other natural calamities such as floods and earthquakes, said the professor.

36,700 strikes in 12 hours

Andhra Pradesh witnessed around 36,700 lightning strikes within about 12 hours on Tuesday which killed nine persons in districts such as Vizianagaram and Guntur. As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics, about 25.1% (2,641) of the 10,510 deaths in India in 2015 due to natural calamities were due to lightning.

According to Prof. Ramakrishna, the atmospheric instability was on the upswing mainly due to the excessive heating, especially in the urban areas. “Global warming and climate change are global phenomenon and are perennial. But the change that we are witnessing today is mainly due to local activity.”

According to him, the monsoon and pre-monsoon activity were undergoing a drastic change. He predicted less of monsoon and seasonal rains and more of thunderstorm activity associated with intense lightning activity, heavy downpour within a short period and squally winds that would have an impact on land and the sea in the coastal region.

“In the earlier days, we would have monsoons due to large-scale phenomenon. In the present scenario, we will have thick cloud cover concentrating over a small area. In such a situation, the thunderstorm activity would be more, associated with huge sudden downpour. And this is termed as local phenomenon. The cloud cover can be so local that it may cover only a part of the city, but could have devastating effect within a short time,” he said.

Prof. K. Vaisakh from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Andhra University College of Engineering (AUCOE), also said the intensity of the lightning was on the rise and each lightning was packed with an average of 10 billion watts of electrical energy and it could go up to 500 trillion watts in the coming days.

Safety tips

Giving a few safety tips, he said people should rush into a concrete building that had some kind of electrical wiring, should not stay in the open space or exposed hilltop or tall and isolated trees. And most importantly, installation of lightning rods with proper earthing should be made mandatory by the authorities concerned.

In most of the death cases, it had been seen that a sizeable number was from the farming community. The farmers should be empowered with the Vajrapath app alerts that indicates the possibility of lightning within a radius of 8 to 30 km.