One of our primary goals for 1999 is to obtain more coincident FORTE/EDOT lightning detections than we did in 1998 (when we recorded a couple hundred). This is one of the reasons we deployed an array in Florida, the lightning capital of the United states. In addition to hosting mucho lightning, Florida is rather distant from the FORTE ground stations in Los Alamos, NM and Fairbanks, AK, so satellite operations will interfere minimally with satellite data acquisition over CONUS (the continental US).
The following plot illustrates coordinated operations between FORTE and EDOT. Whenever FORTE views the green box during ascending passes (red box during descending passes) at a zenith angle of less than 60° for more than 3 minutes, EDOT array stations lower their trigger thresholds to maximize their sensitivity to weak and/or distant lightning. Blue circles in the plot show EDOT station locations.