Strange stuff seems to happen when a neutral gas and a plasma "collide": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_ionization_velocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

Strange stuff seems to happen when a neutral gas and a plasma "collide": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_ionization_velocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_ionization_velocity One guess could be (as the WP article above seems to imply) that kinetic energy that would normally go into turbulence instead goes into ionizing the neutral gas (i.e. surrounding airflow). That would transfer kinetic (turbulence) energy into electrostatic energy, and thereby of course reduce turbulence. But this is just a hunch.