As the title says, I decided to take off from Tampa and fly around Idalia a little and then head for Fort Myers. Not one bolt of lightning to be seen. It's certainly not the biggest of issues to deal with, but I do find it a little silly that there's no lightning in such a huge weather event. Here's to hoping that they're working on a new robust weather engine for 2024.

There’s plenty of lightning and seen by more than just me. Read the other thread about flying Hurricane idailia. Perhaps you were not near the storm, at least near enough from a MSFS 2020 POV.

I’ve got about 90 minutes of video in the hurricane. In the next couple of days I will publish some of it. Then you’ll see some lightning!

-B

Edited August 30, 20232 yr by btacon

1 hour ago, Bdub22 said:

As the title says, I decided to take off from Tampa and fly around Idalia a little and then head for Fort Myers. Not one bolt of lightning to be seen. It's certainly not the biggest of issues to deal with, but I do find it a little silly that there's no lightning in such a huge weather event. Here's to hoping that they're working on a new robust weather engine for 2024.

I just flew thru Idalia and there was tremendous lightning, more than I think I've ever seen in MSFS.   One flash was so bright it turned the whole screen white for a second.  And I saw cloud-to-cloud lightning too.

Hurricanes generally don't produce that much lightning, supercells have much more (in real life that is).

At 0425 Est Time.  I am currently in the U.S. at Hernando Florida--KBKV 300759Z AUTO 17012G20KT 6SM -TSRA BR BKN006 BKN011 OVC030 26/26 A2956 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT NE AND S P0002 T02610256 with this METAR off of MeteoBlue.

The only time the Lightning seems not to work is when the red bar under METARS  (x Could not load TAF data: FEEDPACKAGE_TAF: could not Find TAF for station: KBKV.)

Please forgive my ignorance here but do you think this could be the possibility of the weather not showing lightning and or rain at the airport with like a blank black hole on the radar with rain all around the airport?

                                          Thanks & Happy Landings

 

Flying Tampa - Houston. Was lots of lightning south of Tampa on departure, which matched the lightning tracker on the Weatherbug website quite nicely. Impressive.

 

4 hours ago, MarcG said:

Hurricanes generally don't produce that much lightning, supercells have much more (in real life that is).

Yes, been through quite a few of these here since 1997, and normally there is no lightning at all in hurricanes - that is until about a couple years ago. Been seeing it more and more since. Strange!  Maybe it's a side effect of better technology in recent years.. The Idalia eyewall area has quite a bit of lighting (in real world - this link may only be good for about an hour https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=0.00;ts=0;y=29.3594;x=-83.7296;z=9;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;). Normal hurricane storms have horizontal winds not vertical like a traditional supercell.

Haven't booted up the sim to see whats going on.. if it's as "real as it gets" we shouldn't really be able to fly most aircraft near this storm...

Edited August 30, 20232 yr by KERNEL32

Here's an article from the NASA website on lightning in hurricanes:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2006/hurricane_lightning.html

"Generally there's not a lot of lightning in the hurricane eye-wall region. So when people detect a lot of lightning in a hurricane, they perk up -- they say, okay, something's happening."

6 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

Haven't booted up the sim to see whats going on.. if it's as "real as it gets" we shouldn't really be able to fly most aircraft near this storm...

Yes, my take on it was that it was a little too tame.  I mean, there was a lot of lightning, wind, and rain, and turbulence.

But the turbulence wasn't awful.  Just some moderate chop at most I would say.  It never kicked off the A310's autopilot, and hand flying wasn't really that bad.

11 hours ago, MarcG said:

Hurricanes generally don't produce that much lightning, supercells have much more (in real life that is).

The feeder bands often do have lots of lightning in real life though.

It's the central dense overcast that usually doesn't.