Highest flash rate

[Tomas Pucik]

I have always wondered about how frequent can lightning be in severe storms or large complexes ( MCS, MCC ). After having read few articles on this topic, some quite surprising results were found. Flash rate in some storms reached amazing 500 fpm ( flasher per minute), most of the lightning being of IC type.
I would like to know whether 500 fpm is a real number, because it seems to me a bit too many. What is your opinion? How frequent lightning have you observed during your career?
Also, I would like to know whether there are some good articles, publications on correlation of lightning activity with nature and type of the storm.

 

[Bob Schafer]

I don't doubt the possibility of 500 fpm at all.

I have seen some storms with absolutely non-stop lightning and multiple flashes concurrently. In such examples, one wouldn't be counting the time between flashes, but, I guess, estimating the average number of flashes at any given moment.

 

[Oscar van der Velde]

Flash rates have been documented (by NMT Lightning Mapping Array) to be so high in some storms that one cannot unambiguously determine the end of one flash and the start of the next flash. If there is a brief lull in electrical activity you could, but this would effectively lower the flash rates and get longer flash durations (into seconds). If one does not care whether a pulse of light is electrically connected to another, one could count the peaks of luminosity with a photometer and get indeed insane flash rates.