Environment Canada was using streams of radar data to predict the probability of lightning strikes in particular areas. That was in 2014.
Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
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Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#22I use this to make sure no Lightning is in the area when playing Golf. Had a couple of times where you hear a rumble, and see the lightning strikes are many, many miles away in the app, going away from you. So you can keep a close eye on it.
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#23Fun fact: you can integrate Blitzortung lightning strikes into Home Assistant with this HACS repo: https://github.com/mrk-its/homeassistant-blitzortung It will add each strike as a device temporarily on your devices map.
I'd be careful about this, they explicitly do not want you to use their websocket as a public api (hence the obfuscation in their protocol), I wrote a JS library and opted not to play cat and mouse with them.
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#24I've been using this for years. It's very useful in the summer season for hiking. There's an Android app that lets you configure alert if there's a lightning strike nearby. IIRC you could also buy their detector hardware and join the network to help improve accuracy.
Buying proprietary hardware to support a project does not make much sense to me.
They also haven't really sold it for a while AFAIK, a few other comments here have also mentioned this.
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#25I don't have much to add except to say that this is really amazing. I had no idea we had so many interlinked lightning strike detectors across the world. What's really interesting is from time to time, the detectors in Europe seem to be detecting lightning in the US.
"Since the attenuation of VLF waves is smaller for west to east propagation and during the night, thunderstorm activity up to distances of about 10,000 km can be observed for signals arriving from the west during night time conditions. Otherwise, the transmission range is of the order of 5,000 km." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_atmospheric_signal ("sferic")
Just a little teeny tiny bit of morbid curiosity, Blitzortung can also serve as a civilian early detection system for nuclear detonations in the rare, unusual, pesky occurrences of nuclear armageddons ;), a nuclear bomb detonation would show up in the signal with a much higher magnitude than a lightning strike and therefore could be easily detected as well, right?
If so, then it would be useful if Blitzortung could classify unusually high magnitude events and send out a special kind of notification. you would see the notification before you hear anything in the news (that is if you're still alive to see the notification and check Blitzortung).
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#26Fun fact: you can integrate Blitzortung lightning strikes into Home Assistant with this HACS repo: https://github.com/mrk-its/homeassistant-blitzortung It will add each strike as a device temporarily on your devices map.
The Home Assistant integration works very well (once I figured out how to configure it.)
I use it to set off alarms to get out of the pool, and self-power-down sensitive systems.
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#27I use their service ( https://www.lightningmaps.org/ ) often, it is perfect for getting an impression about the scale and distance of an incoming storm. It's a bit of a shame, that their detector system project seems to be frozen/dead. Last version (2014, unavailable for orders): https://www.blitzortung.org/en/cover_your_area.php Forum thread (last post 2019): https://www.blitzortung.org/en/forum.php?tid=1656
Are such instruments of ongoing interest now that we have orbiting lightning mappers? https://www.goes-r.gov/products/baseline-lightning-detection...
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#28This is cool I never really contemplated how frequently there are strikes across the globe. Is there / Could there be a random number generator based on lighting strikes?
Pseudorandom but you’d have an issue with the fact that certain tall objects get struck all the time and there are better radio noise sources that are probably better at generating entropy.
Maybe the timing rather than the locality might be a better input.
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Since the attenuation of VLF waves is smaller for west to east propagation and during the night, thunderstorm activity up to distances of about 10,000 km can be observed for signals arriving from the west during night time conditions. Otherwise, the transmission range is of the order of 5,000 km." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_atmospheric_signal ("sferic")
Just a little teeny tiny bit of morbid curiosity, Blitzortung can also serve as a civilian early detection system for nuclear detonations in the rare, unusual, pesky occurrences of nuclear armageddons ;), a nuclear bomb detonation would show up in the signal with a much higher magnitude than a lightning strike and therefore could be easily detected as well, right? If so, then it would be useful if Blitzortung could c…
"Nuclear detonations are generally realized to be strong
sources of coherent electromagnetic radiation (the elec-
tromagnetic pulse) within the very low and low-frequency
(VLF and LF) radio bands (3-300 kHz) [US. Department of
Defense. 1962. pp. 502-506)."
...
" The network consists of more than 500 lightning receivers and some central processing servers. The sources of the signals we locate are in general lightning discharges. The abbreviation VLF (Very Low Frequency) refers to the frequency range of 3 to 30 kHz." - blitzortung website
So I guess it seems like it sounds be possible, yea!
Re: Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world
#30Fun fact: you can integrate Blitzortung lightning strikes into Home Assistant with this HACS repo: https://github.com/mrk-its/homeassistant-blitzortung It will add each strike as a device temporarily on your devices map.
I'd be careful about this, they explicitly do not want you to use their websocket as a public api (hence the obfuscation in their protocol), I wrote a JS library and opted not to play cat and mouse with them.
Their site specifies how to use the data [0] under "Services that use our data".