User Agreement & Safety

Terms of Service & Safety Warnings

Last updated: September 1, 2026. Please review these terms before using the live lightning map, lightning tracker, and real-time thunderstorm radar tools of Lightning Map.

Critical Meteorological Safety Notice — Not for Life-Critical Operations

Lightning Map is an observational, scientific, and educational tool. Do not rely on this application as your sole decision-making guide for life-safety, marine navigation, or aviation operations. Atmospheric radio signals can experience localized latency, and initial cloud-to-ground strokes may discharge without preceding sensor triggers. Always follow official National Weather Service (NWS) warnings and seek enclosed shelter when thunder is audible.

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing, embedding, or using Lightning Map (“the Service”), you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, please discontinue use of the platform immediately.

2. Open Scientific Data & Accuracy Limitations

The Service aggregates raw Time-of-Arrival (TOA) electromagnetic impulses from global volunteer detector networks, public Doppler weather radar, and NASA satellite sensors to power our real time lightning map.

While our pipeline uses high-speed hyperbolic solvers, atmospheric wave propagation is subject to ionospheric variations, electromagnetic background noise, and varying detector station densities. We make no guarantee of 100% strike capture or absolute positional precision.

3. Outdoor Safety & The 30/30 Rule

When monitoring storms with our thunderstorm tracker, users are advised to observe the meteorological 30/30 Rule:

Step 1 (Count): If the delay between seeing a lightning flash and hearing thunder is less than 30 seconds, the storm is within 6 miles (10 km) — take shelter immediately.

Step 2 (Wait): Stay inside a sturdy building or enclosed vehicle for at least 30 full minutes after the final sound of thunder.

4. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree to use the Service exclusively for lawful, academic, personal, or non-disruptive informational purposes. You agree not to:

Deploy high-frequency socket crawlers or flooding bots that exhaust server bandwidth.
Attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or disrupt WebSocket streaming nodes.
Rebrand or re-sell raw live telemetry without written authorization.

5. Intellectual Property & Open Data Attribution

The user interface, 60 FPS Canvas rendering engine, branding, and sound synthesis algorithms are the intellectual property of Lightning Map. Meteorological datasets are incorporated under collaborative open science frameworks:

Global VLF Community Network: Volunteer Time-of-Arrival receiver mesh.
Esri ArcGIS: High-resolution satellite and gray canvas base layers.
NOAA / NWS: Public NEXRAD Level III radar feeds.
NASA FIRMS & GLM: Geostationary Lightning Mapper observations.

6. Limitation of Liability

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL LIGHTNING MAP, ITS OPERATORS, VOLUNTEERS, OR DATA PROVIDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING PERSONAL INJURY, PROPERTY DAMAGE, OR FLIGHT DELAYS) ARISING FROM USE OF OR RELIANCE ON DATA FROM OUR LIGHTNING MAP LIVE.

7. Inquiries & Legal Contact

For questions regarding these Terms of Service, contact our legal and administrative team at:

legal@lightningmaps.live