Two websites for tracking lightning and thunderstorms in real time

Peter 44 - October 18, 2021

Gear

In Florida, we receive our share of thunderstorms. I wanted to share two websites that I use to track lightning and thunderstorms in real time. There is usually a 2-5 second delay between a strike and when it shows up on the screen, but that’s impressive timing still.

Use this to know when to unplug or plug back in electronics from around your house to avoid surges, track storms, and know when it’s safe or unsafe to go outside or swim.

The first site is https://www.blitzortung.org. Click on your nation’s flag on the left side of the page to zoom into that area. All of the green lines that point to each strike are different research stations that see or hear the strike and by adding in the data of multiple sites and locations, they can quite accurately triangulate each strike.

There is also historical data at the top of the screen so see the general direction and intensity of the storm if you are just tuning in. Click on dates and times in the bottom left corner to select a particular date.

The second site is https://www.lightningmaps.org. By default the lines that point to each station is toggled off, but you can enable it using the icon that looks like an antenna in the top right corner. They also have historical data by clicking on the calendar icon near the top.

((Location of icons and buttons may be different on a phone. I was using my laptop when viewing these.))

Hope this is helpful for someone and can be another resource to make us more prepared.

7  

Ventusky is popular over here, I think it covers the US as well, it provides most climatic conditions.

https://www.ventusky.com/

 

Thanks for the additional resource. I was having fun playing around with all the various options on that site.

 

I just spent the past five minutes staring at my screen watching all the storms going on. Japan is sure getting rocked by some big ones right now.

I’m going to pull this website up next time I see some storms coming in on my weather app.

Does anyone have something similar to this but for snowfall?

 

Click on the SNOW COVER button, its showing me the snowfall near Casper .

 

Thank you Bill! Surprised to see California has a bit of snow itself too.

When I zoom in it tells how many inches of snow there is in that location. I’ll have to compare it to what I see outside and see how accurate it is.

 

Thanks for the links.

I can spend hours fiddling with windy.com 

Well maybe not hours, but it has multiple layers available for thunderstorms, snow, rain, and of course wind. But not just ‘wind’ but wind at any altitude you choose.

 

This app shows lightning strikes overlayed on a map of your neighborhood, so you can see which houses got hit. You can configure it to send alerts when lightning is within a certain distance of your location.

https://apps.apple.com/se/app/my-lightning-tracker-alerts/id1175031987?l=en