Operate safely when thunderstorms are near with Vaisala’s updated lightning software

The weather is warming up and thunderstorms are becoming more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere as we just passed the Vernal Equinox. Northern Hemisphere spring and summer are the most lightning prone times of the year and account for much of the globe’s annual lightning. Vaisala’s lightning team is dedicated to helping keep your operations safe and efficient when lightning threatens and we’ve been focused for months on improving our lightning data display and analysis tools, Thunderstorm Manager and Lightning Exporter.

Thunderstorm Manager is our real-time lightning display and alerting tool. It uses the highest quality total (in-cloud and cloud-to-ground) lightning data from our National Lightning Detection Network NLDN and Global Lightning Dataset GLD360. Thunderstorm Manager monitors thunderstorms as they approach your location and provides the fastest alerts when it’s time to cease operations. With today’s release of the updated Thunderstorm Manager, you’ll see a few changes.

Updated basemaps

First and foremost, you’ll see we’ve updated our basemaps to maps that have finer detail, better contrast, and include the latest buildings, roads, and other features. This allows you to interrogate storms with more precision and zero-in on exactly where lightning impacted your facility. A new option is a dark basemap that allows for full night-mode, reducing eyestrain and glare no matter when you are monitoring the weather.

Improved alert history

For years, Thunderstorm Manager has allowed you to review previous alerts at your location. Last year we extended the history from 24 hours to 7 days.  Starting today, you can now see alerts from the previous 30 days, enabling greater flexibility in analyzing operational performance and investigating previous incidents. The alert history is also exportable to CSV, for review outside of Thunderstorm Manager and easier, longer-term record keeping.

 
Polygon alerts

Alerting based on range rings works great for most facilities, but what if you are tasked with monitoring a transmission line, sprawling college campus, forest, or other complex region? With a shapefile or geoJSON, we can draw your polygon to give you more precise alerts.

Lightning Exporter updates

Once the storms have passed, post-event analysis with Lightning Exporter is better than ever. The high-quality data from NLDN and GLD360 is quickly accessible through an easy-to-use interface, with the ability to download your query as a CSV or Shapefile. We’ve updated the basemap and event preview to help you make a faster preliminary analysis.

Real-time or historical

Whether you need to monitor lightning data in real-time or review it later, Vaisala provides you the tools with Thunderstorm Manager and Lightning Exporter. Keep your outdoor operations safe and efficient this lightning season with trusted data from the pioneers of lightning detection.

To access these new features as an existing user, simply enter your credentials at tsm.vaisala.com for Thunderstorm Manager or lightning-exporter.vaisala.io for Lightning Exporter. If you are a new user, request your 30-day free trial of Vaisala’s Thunderstorm Manager here.