Tag: Blitzortung.org

Thunderstorm overhead

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My hanging baskets are getting well watered. I took a video but you can’t really see the rain well. I looked up the storms on blitzortung.org which is a free thunder and lightening monitoring service covering the whole world. There is a line of thunderstorms heading up from the south from the Welsh border to around Derby passing over Stoke-on-Trent and rumbling north.

The closest lightning was about 2 seconds between flash and boom. That’s about a mile away as there is a time delay due to the speed of light being so much faster than the speed of sound. The last combination was about 12 seconds… 2 seconds equals a mile distance, 12 is therefore 6 miles. It’s going North.

One thing I’ve noticed is the rolling boom of thunder seems to last a lot longer these days. Starting soft before reaching a crescendo then gradually fading. There must be so much energy up there! And it’s just stopped raining… And the birds have started singing again…

Thunder over Stoke.

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I got home in time to miss the worst of the storm. Thunder rolling over the hill. I stepped out of the car and only got a bit damp, but the lightening was coming, and with it the rain.

The heavy rain has now been falling for hours. I videoed a few seconds, but my phone was out of charge so I gave up trying to catch a lightening strike. I posted what I had recorded on Facebook. Water cascading from the gutter in front of my door, rushing down the hill, overflowing onto the pavement. The sky was dark and full up with energy.

Six hours later and the storm has rebounded back to us a few times, lightening flashes and the loudest roars of thunder I have heard in years. The lights flickered off and on at one stage.

I count the seconds after each flash. 2 seconds is a mile. So I can judge how far away the storm is, if the thunder rolls straight after the flash it’s overhead, if it’s heard after 2 seconds that’s a mile. Currently it’s rumbling 6 seconds after the flash so that’s about 3 miles away.

If you want to look at live lightening maps across the world go to https://www.blitzortung.org

Currently on the site the main storm is a few miles south of Stoke-on-Trent. Looking at the rest of the world the USA seems very active. I recommend turning off detectors and turning on the sound so you can hear how active the storms are. It’s safe to accept cookies but I close all ads.

Thundery downpours

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Current lightning over us. It’s gone dark and rumbly above us. Although the main storms seem to be swirling around Congleton and Stone tonight. The map is from Blitzortung.org and I hope I’m not breaching their copyright. I can hardly see its gone so dark, cumulus clouds boiling above us. I’m glad we live at the bottom of the hill, I think we are less likely to get hit! God’s certainly moving a lot of furniture!

The thunder missed us

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There is a website called blitzortung.org you can open up, and if you look at the live maps you can see lightning strikes as they happen. The site covers the whole world but you can zoom in on it.

Tonight it got very dark and cloudy and we had a few flashes of lightning with rumbles of thunder about 5 to 3 miles away (10 and 6 seconds), Light travels fast, sound follows, so 2 seconds equals a mile away.

We just had some heavyish rain but the storm petered out. Looking at the lightning map, the storm split up into two. The storm stopped about three miles away from here

, but a branch of it was heading towards Crewe. There were over 5 thousand strikes in an hour!

I’ve been interested about lightening since I was talking to an elderly lady about 25 years ago. She said she was in her house several years before that. She had the window open because it was so hot, suddenly a ball of lightening came in through the window and bounced off the floor. She didn’t explain what happened afterwards, whether it just dissipated. But clearly it was not too traumatic. I have heard of ball lightning, so it might have been true….

It’s humid!

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Image from blitzortung.org

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use this image of last night’s big thunderstorms. Blitzortung.org shows the movement of thunderstorms across the world with almost live graphics of lightning strikes. I looked a while ago and there is another group of storms coming up from the southwest tonight. I guess we really need the rain, I’m not complaining. I just feel hot and my glasses keep steaming up!

It’s interesting to watch other parts of the world but I wish I could also see rainfall radar at the same time as the thunderstorms may just be showers with rain covering only small areas, like microbursts.