While visiting the boyfriend in SE Washington state a couple weeks ago, I witnessed the most amazing thunder/lightning storm on August 6th. The show went on for many hours and thanks to two and a half inches of rain dumping on us, we didn’t have to worry about the town burning down. (He lives in a very dry deserty area and it’s fire season.) We did lose our phone/internet for a week thanks to a zap to our lines.
I know there are sites that track lightning strikes but I can’t find any that cache images or is there such a thing? I would love to see just how many lightning strikes were charted, since there were 10-20 flashes a minute at some points during the action.
OK, after doing some online research here are your options for finding out local lightning strike info:
Buy your own physical lightning detector instrument and accompanying software.
Get all the info on lightning strikes you want free from National Lightning Detection Network. However, you’ll need to create your own (or buy a) software package that displays that information coherently. However, with the archived data, you can find out how many lightning strikes there were in the area you were on Aug 6.
Hope that someone who has accomplished steps #1 or #2 are displaying your local lightning strike info free on the web.
National lightning strike indicators:
. AccuWeather
. Intellicast WeatherTap They sell a service for all your local weather needs, including local lightning strikes.
Aninoquisi will sell you a lightning detector and software for your local area, but they’re nice enough to show you where their customers have put up on the web local lightning detectors: here. But unfortunately, there isn’t one close to SE Washington state.
However, I was able to find archived radar of the place and time in question. And yes, there was one doozy of a thunderstorm there. Here and Here.
Peace.
Temperature’s rising… barometer’s getting low… How low, girl?