| Lightning inhibits normal operating conditions at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and other locations, leading to inconvenience and detrimental economic impacts. Lightning cessation guidance must safely protect lives and infrastructure. This research focuses on "nonisolated" lightning cases which we defined as one cell whose flashes had ceased while embedded in weak composite reflectivity (Z ≥ 15 dBZ) with another cell still producing flashes. The dataset consisted of 50 warm season (May-September) nonisolated storms near KSC during 2013. The research utilized the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN), the second generation Lightning Detection and Ranging (LDAR-II), and dual polarimetric radar data. These data were merged and analyzed using the Warning Decision Support System-Integrated Information (WDSS-II) at 1 min intervals. The parameters, such as horizontal reflectivity (Z H), that decreased greatest during the cessation period were Z H > 40 dBZ at -5°C, ZH > 35 dBZ at -10°C, graupel presence at -10°C, and graupel presence at -15°C. We tested 60 cessation schemes utilizing a wait time approach. Our safest scheme required that the distance from our decaying storm's 30 dBZ core to the closest signature of graupel associated with the active storm (30G) be greater than 10 nm (~19 km) and the horizontal reflectivity be less than 40 dBZ at -5°C for 10 min. In the independent (dependent dataset), this scheme produced one (zero) false alarm. More research is needed to analyze nonisolated cessation, since no algorithm produced perfect skill when applied to the independent dataset. |
