Lightning Detection
Live Lightning Detection
The lightning activity displayed on this map is updated at one-minute intervals. The display (as the lightning detector antenna) is oriented to the North, and it shows all the activity history of the last 90 minutes, differentiating the lightning strikes by type and time.
The upper bar shows the indicated strike rate per minute, map range, activity history interval, and date/time (UTC). The colour of the strikes that are older than 15 minutes will automatically change in various tones of orange to show the movement of the most intense storm cells. Dotted and labelled diamond shapes, when visible, will highlight the strongest storm cells.
As a reference, the various symbols show, in order from left to right:
- -CG (negative Cloud-to-Ground) strikes, in blue
- -IC (negative Cloud-to-Cloud) strikes, in green
- +CG (positive Cloud-to-Ground) strikes, in red
- +IC (positive Cloud-to-Cloud) strikes, in purple
The hardware that allows these detections is a Boltek LD-350 Lightning Detector storm tracker receiver with its associated external waterproof-enclosed ANT-2 antenna, connected to the Astrogenic NexStorm software, which produces the image above.
Within milliseconds of a lightning strike, the antenna-detector couple will capture the strike location and type, transmitting it to the live map software. The LD-350’s direction-finding antenna measures lightning strike direction and classification, while the LD-350’s receiver estimates the distance from the received signal strength. Advanced signal processing in software improves distance accuracy, reducing the effects of strike-to-strike variations in strike energy.
NOTE – The detection software is still being calibrated, so there is no guarantee that it will detect/correctly locate all lightning strikes in the shown area. Also, if a large number of multiple strikes appears between one image and another, they are to be considered erroneous detections due to local interference and not created by a sudden storm.
