Lightning API demo

Users may issue API queries as far back as January 1, 2016. 

A lightning flash describes the totality of electrical activity during a lightning discharge, including breakdown processes in the cloud and any channels that extend to the ground. A lightning stroke is a lightning channel that makes contact with the ground and lowers either positive or negative electrical charge from the cloud to the ground. Once a leader contacts the ground, a “return stroke” traveling wave propagates back up the channel as the electrical current flows to the ground. This return stroke emits the strong radio wave we measure with our receivers and has an associated peak electrical current. Both NLDN and GLD360 also measure “cloud pulses,” where electrical currents partially neutralize charge separation in the cloud.  

We run continuous benchmarks to validate our storm nowcasting algorithm. These benchmarks compare the forecast polygons with observed lightning data in the forecast time window. For example, we compare the 20-minute forecast polygon against lightning that actually occurs 20 minutes after the forecast time. Running this benchmark also allows us to test refinements to the forecast algorithm and improve it over time.  

These benchmarks incorporate four skill metrics:

1. When the polygon overlaps with lightning in the future (“hits”)

2. When the polygon shades a region that doesn’t see lightning (“false alarms”)

3. When there is lightning that was not covered by a polygon (“misses”)

4. Regions where there is no lightning and no forecast polygon (“correct negatives”)

There are multiple ways to evaluate these metrics. We employ the Heidke skill score, which measures the fractional improvement of the forecast over a “standard” forecast. Compared to random chance, we typically see forecast metrics around 0.4.  

Subscriptions are available based on a few parameters, such as the geographic region of interest, number of users, etc. Data and applications are available to both businesses and consumers. It’s suggested to consult with the Xweather Customer Success or Sales Team to discuss your specific use case - get in touch here.

There are both cheap and expensive single-point (that is, standalone) lightning detection sensors. Both options suffer from a common problem: it’s difficult to estimate the range of a lightning flash from a single sensor. The consequence, from a lightning warning perspective, is a large number of false alarms, since these sensors often inappropriately trigger a warning from very distant lightning. More expensive single-point sensors, which incorporate larger antennas and more sophisticated signal processing, certainly perform better than cheap alternatives. However, network data, such as from NLDN or GLD360, almost always provides better warning skill.  

Ball lightning is an umbrella term for a large collection of anecdotal observations associated with lightning in thunderstorms. Reports usually consist of luminous spherical objects of modest size and lasting for several seconds to minutes. Whatever the cause, our lightning networks would not detect them, as our networks are tuned to detect the fast transient electrical processes associated with return strokes and cloud pulses. An interested reader may reference the Wikipedia page on ball lightning for more speculation on the possible physical mechanisms of this unexplained phenomenon.  

NLDN offers the same precise ~100 m resolution several tens of km from the shoreline. When we merge GLD360 data outside of CONUS, we first check if NLDN detected the stroke. If so, the NLDN stroke will be reported instead of the GLD360 stroke.  

Documentation on webhooks and how they work can be viewed here. For further information on best practices and assistance with configuring a webhook, our Customer Success and Sales teams would be happy to go into further detail - you can reach out here.

Other weather attributes like ambient condition forecasts, weather radar, and severe weather alerts, to name a few, can be retrieved via the API or mapping layers with the same types of queries you would make to grab lightning data. Documentation for those API data endpoints can be found here, and mapping layer documentation can be found here (raster) and here (MapsGL).

If you’re subscribed to our Xweather Lightning Strike Add-on, the Lightning nowcast is available to you. As a reminder, all lightning layers included in the Lightning Strike Add-On count as a 10x volume query.