Electrically charged airways

Lightning strike Darwin airport with Saab in foreground.

My whole professional flying career to date has been in hot sticky climates and Darwin is another. As a bonus feature of the tropics with its sanity stretching humidity is mass f*#k off thunderstorms regularly! I have posted pics in the past of these monsters firing off bolts of lightning. I enjoy watching a good thunderstorm, unless I am at work....because that usually means I have to go up in the same sky as the storm in the very near future.

Last week I was rostered for an early flight from Darwin to Dili in Timor. Just as I got to work in the wee dark hours a pre cursor to the apocalypse unleashed (A large storm). All flights were delayed until the apocalyptic curtain raiser had moved on. It gave me more time to browse through the small duty free store.

We got airborne only thirty minutes behind schedule...not too bad considering. A left turn after take off had us climbing in a relatively Northwest direction as we zig zagged through the remains of the earlier apocalypse. The climb was a lot smoother than I had expected a few close flashes of lightning and a slow rate of climb due to a little ice build up that's all. Ninety miles from Darwin we broke out into clear skies and plodded off over the Timor sea enjoying a light breakfast of fruit salad. It was not until our return to Darwin that we heard that two other aircraft on the same track had to turn back to Darwin after suffering lightning strikes!

Looking back at was.

Since being up here in the top end (Aussie term for Darwin and surrounding area) I have heard about/seen a storm so regular its been named 'Hector' or 'Hector the convector'. It sits over the Tiwi islands for most of the wet season. Second world war aviators used Hector to aid with navigation. Upon further reading on the net I came across Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela! This maybe the worlds most frequent thunderstorm....and to top it off this thunderstorm is actually bad for the environment! It is caused by methane gas rising from bogs...apparently.

Now you may have seen old posts with the odd article from the Ngami times in Botswana...like "Serial donkey rapist caught". The NT news is also famous for outlandish headlines.