My colleagues Dr. Alex DeCaria from the Earth Sciences Department and Mr. Hank Fijalkowski from the intercollegiate athletics department and I collaborated across departments to write and receive a faculty grant to study the effectiveness of hand-held lightning strike detectors. These small devices are popular among certified athletic trainers and coaches for determining when to suspend play due to weather conditions. We presented our research findings at an invited talk during the Pennsylvania Athletic Trainers’ Society annual meeting and clinical symposium in Johnstown, PA on June 5, 2009. The presentation included results from our research conducted with several undergraduate students about how well the strike detectors performed in lightning safety detection. Click here to view our PowerPoint presentation from the conference: PATS PowerPoint.PDF
Later, on January 25, 2011 Dr. DeCaria gave a scientific poster presentation about our research design and findings at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting titled: Detection Efficiencies and Range Accuracies of Three Portable Lightning Detectors Compared with the National Lightning Detection Network. Dr. DeCaria reported that there was reasonable traffic by the poster, with several people stopping to ask detailed questions, including a representative from Vaisala–a company that markets their own handheld detector. Click here to see our scientific poster: AMS Poster.PDF
