The characteristics of winter lightning in Hokkaido as observed by the JLDN

It has been reported that winter lightning occurring along the coastal area of the Sea of Japan has different characteristics when compared to summer lightning. However, those reports described the characteristics only in the coastal area of Honshu, the main island of Japan and there are no reports regarding winter lightning in the region of the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaido. The authors have studied the characteristics of winter lightning observed by the Japanese Lightning Detection Network (JLDN) in the Hokkaido region and report the results of our studies in this paper. We compare our observations in Honshu and in Hokkaido and report the differences between those regions. This is the first paper describing the characteristics of winter lightning in Hokkaido.