Real time, community sourced lightning map: https://www.blitzortung.org/

Posted this some time ago, but it got no traction :(

progbits 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

On one hand I really like that project and what they do, but on the other hand I hate how it's managed.

I was very excited about it over ten years ago and wanted to join the network. They are very weird about not releasing the designs and code, and instead want you to get it from them. Fair enough, but then they don't produce and ship units. I signed up for a waiting list like 10 years ago, with many others. They kept promising a new design, but never delivered it, and didn't let anyone else do so. I never heard back from them about the waiting list.

They are also restrictive about access to the data if you are not in the network, with reasons like it's too expensive. That might have been true 10-15 years ago, but today it's just silly.

It's a shame, I think there is lot of potential to make a better community and more usable free apps around this data. But you would have to start a new network from scratch because these people are not interested in that.

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bityard 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's been around long enough that I think it's pretty well known by now. At any rate, it was posted 11 months ago by someone else and has a number of comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41370187

	▲	ronsor 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I just learned about it today. https://xkcd.com/1053/

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7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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LargoLasskhyfv 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well. I bookmarked it now. Seems to have got an update, since the last time I looked at it. Meaning it just works. But not necessarily better than the lighntingmaps.org I've used instead. Different styles for the same thing. Will check in the future from Hamburg, .de and Aspen, CO how accurate it really is.

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forsalebypwner 7 hours ago | parent [-]

My understanding is that lightningmaps.org is owned/operated by Blitzortung (see the upper right corner of lightningmaps.org).

	▲	LargoLasskhyfv 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Could be, I seem to recall some relationship. It was just that blitzortung didn't work right for me. While lightningmaps did. Anyways. That's from years (maybe 10?) ago. Maybe my browser just got better? Who knows :-) By working right, I mean whenever I see flickering from afar, or hearing the first rolling of thunder, clicking on it without much fuss, maybe zooming out, shifting a little, zooming back in and seeing what's going on where instantly. Which in the context of larger storms works even better in kachelmannwetter.com, because there it's embedded in other data, and projected where it moves/arrives in how many minutes in easily understandable symbology. But that's for Germany only. Useless for Colorado. Havn't found something comparable for there, so far. Would be mostly useless anyways, because weather at 2600+ m altitude changes faster. Or can.