Australia; VIC; TAS
Australian researchers have looked at what could have caused the tragic thunderstorm asthma event in Melbourne on 21 November 2016, and found that it was not likely to have been caused by water is the air breaking up the pollen - which is commonly suggested as the mechanism underlying thunderstorm asthma. Instead, they say the models suggest lightning may have played a role. They looked at mechanisms including mechanical friction from wind gusts, electrical build-up and discharge incurred during conditions of low relative humidity, and lightning strikes. They say their results suggest that these mechanisms likely operated in tandem with one another, but the lightning strike mechanism was the only one to generate a pattern of sub-pollen particles following the path of the storm, and also more accurately describes how the pattern of emergency calls for ambulances evolved after the storm.
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