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Lightning Map
What a lightning map shows, what it cannot show, and where to look for the area you care about.
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What a lightning map actually plots
There are two completely different things sold as a “lightning map”, and confusing them is why people end up disappointed.
Detection maps plot strikes that have already happened. They come from ground sensor networks that triangulate the radio pulse a strike emits, or from satellites — in the Americas, the GOES lightning mappers watch for the optical flash from geostationary orbit. These are historical by nature: a dot means a strike landed there, seconds to minutes ago.
Risk maps, including the one behind this site, plot where the atmosphere can support storms in the hours ahead. They are built from model fields — instability, moisture, lift — rather than from strikes. They are the ones that answer “should I start driving home now”.
Why coverage is uneven
Strike detection is excellent over the US and Europe, thin over oceans and much of the southern hemisphere, and effectively absent in places with no sensor network. Satellite mappers cover whole hemispheres but only the ones a satellite is parked over. Any map that claims complete global strike coverage in real time is overselling.
Risk modelling, on the other hand, is global — every point on Earth has a forecast, which is why the city pages here work anywhere the model runs.
Reading the colours without fooling yourself
A cluster of strikes 40 km away tells you a storm exists, not that it is coming for you. Storms move with the flow aloft, which is often nothing like the wind you feel at ground level. Watch the trend over ten minutes rather than the snapshot: strikes filling in towards you matter, strikes accumulating away from you do not.
And the rule that outlives every map: if you can hear thunder, you are already in range. Thunder rarely carries beyond about 10 miles, and strikes reach that far from the cloud that made them.
Storm risk by city
Live conditions and storm-day history for the cities that get the most storms.
Common questions
- Is there a free live lightning map?
- Yes — several networks publish live strike maps for free, and national weather services publish storm warnings. What is rarely free is a strike history for a specific address, or long-term strike density at city level.
- Why does the map show a storm but nothing is happening here?
- Because most maps plot an area of storms, not a track. A cell 30 km away may miss you entirely. The useful question is the trend over the last ten minutes, not the current picture.