© Copyright 2016 - Jody B. Smyers
www.JodySmyersPhotography.com

 

With the spring thunderstorm season upon us and lots of storms forecast to invade the South Plains and eastern New Mexico over the next few days, I wanted to post this information for those who have not seen it.

LightningMaps is a great 'open-source' site that displays lightning strikes almost as they happen, from local storms to storms around the world. The site is intuitive and easy to learn, but the basics of it's use are:

- New strikes show up as a yellow dot with a red ring around it.
- Older strikes are yellow, and as time passes, the color darkens to a brown dot, so that it's easy to tell which are the newest strikes.
-  If 'zoomed' in close enough, new strikes show a semi-opaque circle moving outward from the center. This is the approximate travel of the thunder outward from the strike (moving at the speed of sound of course).
- In the top left corner of the map, there is an "i" button to access helpful information about what you are seeing, as well as numbers indicating the number of strikes occurring per minute, and the current delay between an actual strike and the time it is indicated on the map.

LightningMaps is a fantastic site for people who are interested in weather, and is a fascinating and useful tool for watching and tracking the summer storm strikes as they happen.

Photograph courtesy of Jody Smyers Photography, Lubbock, Texas.

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