Lightning map and live thunderstorm tracker
An online lightning map built on NOAA and EUMETSAT satellite data. It shows where thunderstorms are active right now, how they moved over the last hour and what happened over the past day. Mark your place and the map works out the distance to the nearest lightning, its direction and the speed at which the storm front is approaching or leaving. Next to every answer you can see how many minutes old the data is and where the satellites see nothing.
How to use the lightning map
Bright spots are fresh lightning; the darker and redder, the older. The line above the map says how many minutes old the data is.
Press “Near me” or tap any point on the map: you get the distance to the storm, its direction and its movement.
The “Play” button shows how the storm moved; the “24 hours” switch shows where it thundered over the past day.
Saw a flash? Start the thunder stopwatch and stop it on the rumble to learn how far the strike was.
See where lightning is striking and where the storm is heading
Thunder plays where flashes reach the map about a minute after the strike — over the Americas.
Press “Near me” or tap any point on the map to see how far the nearest storm is and which way it is heading.
Tell me when a storm gets close
Mark a point on the map — home, a cabin, a campsite — and pick a circle. We will message you when the satellite sees lightning inside it, and again when the storm has moved on.
The message arrives minutes after the strike: 1–3 over the Americas, up to 15 over Europe and Africa. It is a satellite observation, not a forecast, and the satellite does not see every flash. If you can hear thunder, you are already within striking range.
Where it is thundering now
Thunder stopwatch
Works everywhere, even where the satellites have no data. Tap when you see a flash, tap again when you hear the thunder.
Sound covers a kilometer in about three seconds. If a point is selected on the map, a circle of that radius appears around it.
Lightning data: NOAA (GOES satellites) and EUMETSAT (contains modified Meteosat data, 2026). The map shows satellite observations and is not an official storm warning — those come from your national weather service. Map © OpenStreetMap and OpenFreeMap.
What this map sees — and what it doesn’t
The lightning here is caught by satellites, not ground stations: their cameras see a flash through the cloud. Each satellite has its own half of the world, its own delay and its own limit of accuracy.
| Where | What the map shows | Delay | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|
| North and South America, the Atlantic and the eastern Pacific | Individual flashes and storm cells (GOES-East and GOES-West satellites, NOAA) | about a minute | 8–14 km |
| Europe, Africa, the Middle East, European Russia up to the Urals | Individual flashes in batches every 10 minutes, plus storm cells in 5-minute frames (MTG satellite, EUMETSAT) | 1–12 minutes | 5–10 km, coarser toward the Urals |
| Siberia, the Russian Far East, Asia, Australia, polar regions | No data: no satellite with open lightning data watches them | ||
What not to expect
- Every strike: the satellite catches roughly 70–90% of flashes, fewer by day than by night and fewer still near the edge of its view.
- An answer to “did it hit the ground”: the camera sees light, and a cloud-to-cloud discharge looks the same as a ground strike.
- Street-level precision: the position error is measured in kilometers, so the distance to a storm carries the same margin.
- Precipitation: rain and hail are not shown, only lightning.
