Lightning maps

[Gibli]

The lightning maps which ceased in mid December when the UK Met Office stopped sending the coded reports, have now returned in a slightly different form and with 5 minute updates. Thanks due I believe to Christian of 'meteocentre'. Link below:

http://meteocentre.com/lightning/map_sfuk....&map=Europe

You'll see various options along the top - Europe, France, northwest Europe and southeast Europe. Colour coding is the number of minutes since a strike occurred, so royal blue = 180 to 360 minutes since a strike etc. etc. Toggle 'type' on the right hand side for the number of impacts in the last 30 minutes.

The return of a really useful site for storm watchers.

Gibli

[Cookie]

net weather has a very good lightning dectors

[Nick F]

Good to see the meteocentre sferics plots back, it has always been my 'prefered' lightning detector ever since I started following storms on the interent and IMO the most accurate of the free ones. So I was disappointed when it stopped. Met Office Atd detector is the most accurate, if you don't mind paying an annual subscription!

[Paul]

The meteocentre site was using the atd data, which I think has now been pulled as it's not been updated since the 18th and I know the meto charge 12,000euro's a year for it so I imagine they wouldn't want it given out for nothing!

[Nick F]

Ah that's a shame - netweather is certainly a viable alternative option. I see no reason why the MetO can't at least have a free hourly sferics chart - with free radar at 30 min intervals. Though, I guess there's quite alot of commercial interest in accurate lightning data.