Weather24Lightning map: where it is striking right now
Every strike detected across the United States in the last minutes, on one live map — together with the storm cells that produced them. Drag the time-lapse to see which way a cell is moving.
Lightning strikes near me
The map watches the frame — this block watches you: how far the closest detected strike is from where you are, or from any US city or ZIP code you type.
Strikes in the current map view
Every strike from the last 10 minutes inside the area on screen. Move or zoom the map and the count is requested again for the new view. To measure the distance from your own position instead, use the closest-strike check above.
in the last 10 minutes, within 875 mi of the map center
Latest strike: 1 s ago
The page shows now. The app tells you what is coming.
Weather24 sends a push before a storm cell reaches you, so you find out without opening anything.
Where it is striking across the country
2,135 strikes were detected across the continental United States in the last ten minutes, the most recent one less than a minute ago.
Closest to the metros we track, within 100 miles:
What the distance means
It is a measured position, not an estimate
Every strike is located by a network of ground sensors that time the radio pulse of the discharge. The distance you get is geometry, not a model's guess.
Flash to bang, five seconds a mile
Sound needs about five seconds to travel a mile. Count from flash to thunder and divide by five — it should roughly match the number this page gives you.
One reading is not a direction
A single distance tells you how far, not where to. Ask again in a minute: a shrinking number means the cell is moving toward you, a growing one means away.
The check above measures from a point — your coordinates, or the center of the place you typed. That makes it the right answer to “how far from me, right now”, but the number moves with you: two people in the same metro can get different readings, and both are correct.
A city page watches a fixed area instead: every strike within its radius, its own map and its own history. If you keep checking the same place, that page is the better bookmark — pick your metro from the city list.
How to read the map
Each bolt is one measured strike
Bolts sit at the position where the discharge was located, not at a nearby city. Fresh strikes glow brighter and fade with age — tap one to see how many minutes ago it hit.
Purple is the storm cell
The shade tells you how intense the cell is: pale purple at the edge, the dark core in the middle is the strongest part. Lightning usually clusters around that core.
The time-lapse shows the track
Playing the last two hours makes the direction obvious: you can see whether a cell is drifting past you or heading straight at you, which a single snapshot never tells you.
Lightning map or rain radar?
They answer different questions. The lightning map is about electrical activity: it plots individual strikes as they are detected, so it tells you where a storm is actually discharging and how close that is to you at this minute.
The rain radar is about precipitation: it shows where rain is falling and how heavy it is, which is what you want when the question is whether to wait ten minutes before walking out. Both run on the same map here, so you can switch either layer on with the buttons on the map. Start with the rain radar if rain is the thing you care about.
Cities with their own lightning page
The map opens directly over the city, with the strike count for that area. Your town is not here yet? Use the search at the top — the map will fly to it.