A record for an abysmally high number of lightning discharges in a single day occurred on 16 April 2019, where almost 58,066 flashes (cloud to ground + inter cloud) with a maximum of 179 flashes/min were observed over India. Researchers have hypothesized that an intense Western Disturbance (WD) caused these high numbers of lightning flashes, which prevailed in the northwestern part of India and spread over much of the country. Instead, in this paper, it is suggested and shown through multiple datasets that a dust intrusion into the storm altered cloud characteristics at the microphysical level, most likely favouring charge separation in cloud particles. The back trajectory calculation indicated that there was a south-westerly transport of dust/ aerosol which converged within the secondary flow associated with the WD and lofted into the higher levels. It is hypothesized that the entrainment of dust acting as cloud condensation nuclei as well as ice nuclei induced a favourable condition for charge separation. Also a dust-boosting feedback loop was set up due to the prevailing intense WD which further accelerated the electrification process and led to the catastrophic lightning.

2019 年 4 月 16 日创下了单日闪电放电数量惊人的记录，在印度上空观察到了近 58,066 次闪电（云对地 + 云间），最多为 179 次/分钟。研究人员假设，强烈的西部干扰 (WD) 导致了大量闪电，这些闪电在印度西北部盛行并蔓延到该国大部分地区。相反，在本文中，通过多个数据集提出并表明，灰尘侵入风暴在微物理水平上改变了云特征，最有可能有利于云粒子中的电荷分离。反向轨迹计算表明，尘埃/气溶胶向西南方向输送，会聚在与 WD 相关的二次流内，并上升到更高的水平。假设作为云凝结核和冰核的尘埃的夹带诱导了电荷分离的有利条件。由于普遍存在的强烈WD，还建立了一个扬尘反馈回路，这进一步加速了电气化过程并导致了灾难性的闪电。