So, the first thing looking at today is the best way to display Minimum Flash Area.  This is a nice addition to the Flash Area products and seems to have some utility in displaying the state of convective growth.  As a reminder, smaller flashes are usually indicative of new or strengthening convection while larger flashes are mature/decaying/sustaining stages of convection.  This will come in handy with a lot of convection to see which cores may be the strongest in any given area.

The problem is the best way to view this information; the 5-minute with 1-minute updates seems to have worked well in the past for most of the GLM data but seems to cause some problems with the Minimum Flash Area.  Case in point, here is a 4-panel with the 5-minute/1-minute update from the Texas Panhandle north of Amarillo (TL – Flash Extent Density, TR – Minimum Flash Area, BL – Total Optical Energy, BR – empty; note, non-default color tables on the top row!):

Wow!  That’s a pretty large area of small flashes (purple).  BUT, it’s a total from the last 5-minutes so storms could have moved, strengthened, weakened, dissipated, etc. in that time.  What does the “regular” 1-minute plot look like?

Huh?  Where did all the small flashes go?  Well, the small flashes (purple) in this case are likely where the GLM is seeing the strongest updates in the last minute, not the last 5 minutes.

Something to consider when looking at rapidly developing convection, storms that are moving fast, or storms that are pulsing with rapid time intervals; the 5-min with 1-min update can mask important details when it comes to storm electrification!

-Dusty