Paul Lee captured lightning striking over the area close to Marina during last year’s lightning season. - PAUL LEE
SINGAPORE (The Straits TImes/Asia News Network): Whether rain or shine, there is lightning streaking across Singapore’s skies on 175 days or about half the year.
And three avid photographers who are part of an interest group called SGStormTrackers have been carrying their cameras and chasing the perfect shot of lightning bolts.
One of them, Wong Liang Piow, 47, said he first started chasing lightning when he got his hands on the first camera that allowed photographers to capture lightning easily at night.
Wong, who has been on a quest to capture lightning shots since 2014, said: “I love chasing lightning because of the intensity of nature is frozen into a moment which our eyes cannot visualize the same.”
SGStormTrackers can count themselves lucky that they were born in Singapore, which can stake a claim to being one of the lightning capitals of the world.
Paul Lee, 44 and James Gan, 54, who are two other members of the three-year-old group, said they started taking pictures of lightning during the pandemic.
They usually meet each other every few months, said Lee.
“But lightning season has given us a reason to hang out with each other every weekend,” he added.
Lee said a big part of the fun he has chasing lightning comes from the planning and tracking a storm.
He said: “On some special days when the sky absolutely blows up, the scene is stunning beyond words. The sound, the huge flashes, the smell of the storm, the wind... it’s unbelievable.”
Novice shutterbugs keen to take photos of lightning can join their interest group, said Gan, and the experienced photographers in the group can give tips on the best conditions to shoot, like location and wind direction.
He added that he uses two apps for storm chasing: Lightning Alarm and NEA’s myENV mobile app to track storms. myENV gives information about the movement of stormy clouds over Singapore and the weather forecast, among other things.
In Singapore, about 50 per cent of the year’s lightning days are in April, May, October and November - months that fall between the two major monsoon seasons.
The north-east monsoon blows from December to early March, and south-west monsoon is from June to September.
The island gets warmer weather during inter-monsoon season, which, along with other conditions, result in more lightning activity, said the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), which falls under the National Environment Agency (NEA).
An MSS spokesman added that lightning strikes are produced by thunderstorm clouds, which occur when there is moisture in the air amid an unstable atmosphere.
Lightning can also strike even when there is no rain or thunderstorm cloud in the area. Although the bolts mostly strike within 6km of a thunderstorm cloud, lightning strikes have been documented to occur more than 10km away, said the MSS spokesman.
When outdoors and thunder is heard, people should seek shelter, he added.
He said: “People in open spaces as well as tall structures, are more at risk of being struck by lightning. While outdoors and thunder is heard, seek shelter in a building or a car, and wait at least 30 minutes after thunder is last heard before resuming outdoor activities.”
Associate Professor Koh Tieh Yong from the Singapore University of Social Sciences said the reason for greater lightning activity outside monsoon season is due to stronger solar radiation and light winds, making the atmosphere more conducive for the formation of thunderstorm clouds.
He said: “Strong solar radiation leads to higher surface temperatures and hence the air is warmer and more buoyant.”
He added that light regional winds often more intense as well, due to the absence of larger weather phenomena like monsoons.
Prof Koh, who is also a weather and climate scientist, said the absence of such a large system gives way to smaller local weather systems like land-sea breezes that, although brief, are strong local gusts.
With the predominance of smaller-scale weather systems like thunderstorms during inter-monsoon season, energy within the system itself is more concentrated, he added.
“Up-and-down air movement is enhanced, causing stronger electrical charging as cloud droplets collide, resulting in more frequent lightning activity,” he said.
