Sub-second precision for global storm monitoring.
Our live lightning map and lightning tracker provide free, real-time thunderstorm telemetry. By fusing planetary Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio triangulation with high-speed GPU rendering, we deliver live strike coordinates to researchers, aviators, and communities worldwide with zero data harvesting.
Engineered for clarity, speed, and privacy.
Open Scientific Telemetry
We believe that life-safety meteorological data must be accessible to everyone. Our real time lightning map operates without subscription paywalls, gated user accounts, or cross-site tracking.
Microsecond TOA Solving
By synchronizing thousands of volunteer receiver stations with GPS atomic clocks, our backend computes strike coordinates and acoustic propagation fronts with under 2.0 seconds of global latency.
Client-Side Privacy
When using the locator to detect lightning strikes near me, all coordinates remain in browser memory. Geolocation data is never logged, sent to servers, or commercialized.
How Time-of-Arrival (TOA) Triangulation Works
When an electrical discharge closes between a thundercloud and the ground, it radiates electromagnetic pulses known as sferics across the low-frequency spectrum. Here is how our thunderstorm tracker captures each event:
VLF Radio Wave Capture (3 kHz – 30 kHz)
Ground stations deploy magnetic loop antennas to receive VLF sferic bursts. These low-frequency radio waves bounce within the Earth-ionosphere waveguide, allowing detection across several thousand kilometers.
Nanosecond GPS Clock Stamping
Each detector timestamps the exact microsecond the signal peak reaches the antenna, utilizing GNSS/GPS atomic clock receivers accurate to ±100 nanoseconds.
Hyperbolic Intersection Algorithms
Central computing clusters evaluate the arrival time differences between at least 5 participating stations. The intersection of these hyperboloids pinpoints the exact geographic coordinate of the strike.
60 FPS Direct GPU Rendering
Our web client renders active strikes on a synchronized HTML5 Canvas overlay, calculating the expanding acoustic sound ring (~340 m/s) so users can visually anticipate thunder.
Powered by volunteer stations and open meteorological data.
Our lightning map live platform combines data streams from the open global VLF Time-of-Arrival (TOA) receiver mesh, NASA GOES-16/18 GLM optical sensors, and Esri ArcGIS base mapping.