A severe thunderstorm rocked the southern district of Choma, Zambia where it claimed the lives of two minors on 26 February 2016. Officials initially thought the children drowned in Kabananas stream in the Maamba area, but upon further inspection they found lightning burns on their bodies. During a 12-hour period, over 100,000 strikes of lightning affected the region. These strikes, both in-cloud (purple) and cloud-to-ground (yellow) can be seen in the video below powered by Earth Networks Total Lightning Network.
[video width="854" height="480" mp4="http://globalsevereweather.earthnetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/zambia.mp4"][/video]
Over 1,200+ lightning sensors worldwide are used to track long-range in-cloud lightning at high efficiency. Tracking in-cloud lightning allows for Earth Networks to issue Dangerous Thunderstorm Alerts, since deadly weather events like cloud-to-ground strikes often occur 5-30 minutes after in-cloud lightning discharges.
The above photo shows three purple polygons, indicating three DTAs during this storm in Northern Zimbabwe, just below the Choma District of Zambia.
