Warning of lightning risk for the first lightning produced by a thunderstorm using electric field mill network records

In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of elapsed time between the first variation of electric field recorded by an Electric Field Mill that we call “pulse” and the first cloud-to-ground lightning. We present the result of studying the electric field recorded by two different databases of electrical field mill networks in Brazil during thunderstorm activity. The first one is the CHUV A project database (latitude 23°S), and the other is the UFMS database (latitude 20°S). We present data recordedby both databases and compare the elapsed time between the beginning of electrical activity and the first intracloudlightning and the elapsed time between the first intracloud lightning and the first cloud-to-ground lightning. These parameters are fundamental for emitting lightning alerts.