WEATHER · LIGHTNING
Lightning
Live lightning strike density — recent cloud-to-ground and in-cloud strikes, animating in ~15-minute frames like the radar; the electrically active heart of a thunderstorm.
What it shows
The lightning layer shows strike density — where lightning has been detected in the last few hours, from ground-based sensor networks. Bright cells mark the electrically active heart of a thunderstorm, the part putting bolts to ground and flashing inside the cloud.
How to read it
Frames step forward about every fifteen minutes, so press play to watch strike clusters flare up, drift and fade with the storms that carry them. Pair it with the rain radar: the strikes sit inside the heaviest precipitation. Coverage spans the Western Hemisphere, the Atlantic and most of Europe and Africa — Australia, central Asia and the mid-Pacific fall outside the sensor networks, so a blank there means out of range, not calm skies.
SEE IT LIVE
Open the full weather console with lightning on, then stack other overlays and scrub the forecast.