It’s the story of love at first sight. That of a scientist passionate about storms with the Cantal department. It is in the immensity of the Cézallier plateau, not far from the Sancy massifs, that Raymond Piccoli chose to study lightning…in his own way. Meeting with a researcher inflamed by the love of lightning.
While many are hiding at home or hiding under the sheets from the roar of the storm, Raymond Piccoli goes as close as possible to the lightning. This scientist made it his specialty. This lightning expert is the director of the lightning research laboratory based in Champs-sur-Tarentaine-Marchal in Cantal. This researcher decided to devote himself, 30 years ago, to this impressive atmospheric phenomenon. For this, he chose Cantal, and it is not by chance…
It is in the premises of a former gendarmerie barracks at the foot of the largest volcano in Europe that Raymond Piccoli and his team decided to put down their suitcases and look up to the sky. These are partly the “preserved skies ” of the department which attracted this researcher. “We are in a wonderfully quiet place to work, he enthuses. Cantal is a place where there is very little industry, very little pollution, little intensive agriculture. All this means that we have a sky of great transparency. In Cantal, we have purer skies that certain high altitude Alpine departments do not have”. Their research areas extend well beyond the Sancy or Cantal massifs. They cover also the departments of Ardèche, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Alpes-Maritimes, without forgetting the missions abroad.
With a team strong of 16 researchers, engineers and technicians, Raymond Piccoli lives to the rhythm of storms. He claims a methodology “old”. He preferred to algorithms and 3D modeling, terrain and “reality“. Unique methods in France: “On works in the heart of storms, in real conditions. We are One of the last research units, at the level international, to work like this. We do not do digitization or computer models. We are in the heart of the storms, closest to the lightning zone. As soon as stormy activity is forecast, we form the teams, we take our instruments and here we go. And it can be at any time of the day or year. We work to the rhythm of the storms”. Impossible for Raymond Piccoli to do without these real research conditions. “Imagine that you are a zoologist and specialist in lions, he imagines. You have been studying this animal for 20 years but the only lions you have seen are those reported in writing and in photos. Wouldn’t you like to go see them? It’s the same for us”.
A very rare practice in the small world of lightning research. So rare that the Auvergne laboratory attracts researchers from all over the world. “We born there are only 3 French people among the team of 16 researchers, he emphasizes. The rest are Americans, Germans or Italians”. Going as close as possible to storms and lightning is necessarily dangerous. Raymond Piccoli is aware of this: “It is possible that we sometimes found, it is very rare and that is not the goal, less than 20 meters from a lightning strike. We we are perfectly aware risks. When the danger is too great for us, we turn back.”
During his three decades of research, Raymond Piccoli has made some surprising discoveries. The observations included revealed the influence volcanic massifs of Cantal on the course of storms. “Volcanic massifs modify the dynamics of the storm, explain the scientist. And the consequences can be very different. It is random : either stormy activity loses its intensity or even stops short sometimes; either the storms will resume activity and become more intense.” Thanks to field observation, researchers have observed other particular phenomena linked to volcanic massifs: “We don’t know if it’s specific to these massifs but the structure of lightning changes. They become very sinuous, with very anarchic shapes, will make astonishing journeys before hitting the ground, sometimes several kilometers laterally. Lately, we happened to observe a cell storm located 4 or 5 kilometers from Puy Mary. We saw lightning flashing nearly horizontally to hit the sides of the massif. This is something very unusual. It is intriguing these local conditions because as soon as we pass the volcanic massifs of Mont du Cantal and return to the Limon plateau, the lightning takes on a more usual structure”.
Even if Raymond Piccoli is a fine connoisseur of lightning, he nevertheless remains many unanswered questions. One in particular who intrigues researchers : leprechauns. Not the little creatures of popular beliefs but light phenomena caused by lightning, in this case powerful flashes, in the upper atmosphere and which appear in the form of vertical columns, most often reddish in appearance, more rarely blue.. “It’s fascinating. It is the interaction between storms, the upper atmosphere and the limits to space.. It’s grandiose, the scientist exclaims. And we are only at the beginning of research into these fascinating phenomena.”. His laboratory is also the designer of the leprechaun network which, with 8 other automated stations spread across France, and soon two abroad, tracks these fleeting phenomena. And according to the researcher, both resorts capturing the most leprechauns are those of the Alpes de Haute Provence… and Cantal. Raymond Piccoli estimates the number of leprechauns captured each year by the network at 200. Fleeting and so fast, it is very difficult to see them with the naked eye, but not impossible. The researcher admits to having observed it, with the naked eye, “only twice in 20 years”. “It’s exhilarating and fascinating at a time, marvels the scientist. It is a privilege to see these fabulous phenomena of nature”. On the laboratory’s YouTube channel, scientists regularly share images stations in the Farfadet network. As in this video filmed in Cantal :
Regarding research on lightning, but also on leprechauns, there is still so much to do…. “VSis an area that not interested not many people and that’s a shame, deplores Raymond Piccoli. However, we only know very little in the end about lightning and the phenomena that revolve around it“. He recalls the importance of research on lightning: “We must understand that if tomorrow there were no more lightning on the planet, all forms of life would disappear. It is lightning that regulates the earth’s electrical and electrostatic activity. It allows them to be kept at acceptable levels for all forms of life. For this reason, we have 2,000 to 2,500 permanently active storms around the planet. And they will emit 8 to 12 million flashes per day.”
Facing the unknown. This is what ignites this lightning specialist. Mysteries are part of his daily life. He is member of the GEIPAN College of Experts, a service of the National Center for Space Studies which deals with unidentified aerospace phenomena, in other words UFOs. “For the GEIPAN, my opinion consists of saying whether what people saw is compatible with a ball lightning hypothesis or plasma atmospheric or not, he specifies. And sometimes, these files join the long list of unresolved cases. There is consanguinity important between phenomena linked to globular lightning And some UFO sightings”.
In any case, one thing is certain: the sparkle in Raymond Piccoli’s eyes is always there when it comes to lightning.
