A gigantic jet over Puerto Rico

On September 5, Frankie Lucena pointed his camera toward a tropical wave, just South of Puerto Rico.

A tropical wave is a type of low atmospheric pressure area that is elongated and oriented from North to South. It moves from East to West across the tropics, causing clouds and thunderstorms.

Lucena said that he managed to shoot several giant jets and clusters of sprites.

For years, he has been monitoring sprites and giant jets — weaker weather systems are often the source of powerful upward-pointing lightning, he said. He noted that increasing tropical waves produce the most sprites. Often these systems then strengthen to hurricanes.

However, after that, the sprite activity drops. Lucena has seen many passing hurricanes — oddly, their peaks are "quiet". According to NASA, hurricanes also produce less regular lightning. These vortices usually lack the vertical winds needed to "charge" the storm and release powerful lightning.