Live on the globe now: 144 tracked
This layer plots lightning strikes on the live globe the moment they are detected. Each point is a single cloud-to-ground or in-cloud discharge, dropped at its triangulated location; new strikes flash on as they happen and fade out after a few seconds, so what you see is the storm activity of right now, not a rolling map of the last hour. The feed comes from Blitzortung, a volunteer community network of hobbyist radio receivers run by enthusiasts around the world. These stations pick up the radio pulse from each discharge and the network cross-references the arrival times across many receivers to fix where the strike happened. Because detection is crowdsourced and free, coverage is densest where volunteers are densest (Europe, North America, parts of Asia and Australia) and thinner over open ocean and sparsely covered regions. The strikes here stream in near-real-time over a WebSocket rather than being polled, which is why they appear within seconds. We do not archive this layer, the volume is enormous and each strike is fleeting, so this view is deliberately live-only. Lightning is one of around 29 live data layers on the overwatch.earth globe, which you can spin, zoom, and click into to inspect any single strike.
Data source: Blitzortung
From Blitzortung (blitzortung.org), a volunteer-run, community lightning detection network. Hobbyist stations detect the radio pulse from each discharge, and the network triangulates the strike location from the arrival times across many receivers.
Effectively real-time. Strikes stream in over a live connection and appear within seconds of detection, then fade after a few seconds. There is no replay or history on this layer, you are watching strikes as they occur.
Coverage depends on where volunteers run receiver stations. Strike detection is strongest over Europe, North America, and other well-covered areas, and sparser over open oceans and regions with few stations, so empty patches reflect detection gaps, not necessarily clear skies.
No. Because lightning is extremely high-volume and each strike is momentary, this layer is live-only and not archived. It shows current activity rather than accumulated strikes over time.