No matter your age, there is truly something fascinating - or maybe even frightening - about thunder and lightning angrily rumbling and flashing in the skies over your local area. These weather events can often catch people by surprise, especially in the UK when we are just getting used to a spell of hot and humid weather and have all sorts of plans for barbecues and garden parties.
While the forecast on the BBC or ITV may go some way to predicting thunderstorms across the UK, being able to know the exact moment of a flash of lightning followed by the rumble of thunder is far more difficult. However, there are many useful websites that are able to track these movements step-by-step.
This allows users to spot the trend of movement across the globe, giving you some idea of how near these storms are to you and whether they’re likely to hit. According to the Met Office, it is estimated that a lightning strike hits somewhere on the Earth's surface approximately 44 times every second, culminating in a total of nearly 1.4 billion lightning strikes every year.
Read more: Freak thunderstorms lash Greater Manchester - but it's going to be hotter than Monaco tomorrow
The ability to track these movements is truly engrossing. The sites that offer this service range from simple websites to more complex mobile apps.
LightningMaps.org
This is a great starter website as it is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, with no payment required to use its lightning strike data, unlike other apps and websites. At face value, this community-run website looks very basic.
However, that is part of its appeal as its straightforward nature in giving lightning strike data makes it incredibly accessible to use and understand. A single fading dot flashes for every strike detected, offering a simple device to monitor the nearest known strikes and subsequent thunderstorms.
My Lightning Tracker
This is an app which is available on the Apple Store and Google Playstore. While its base version can be downloaded for free, the My Lightning Tracker Pro edition is priced at £2.49 for those more invested thunder spotters.
Advertised as "the best app for monitoring lightning strikes all around the world in close to real-time", this app comes with a sleek modern design which allows you to watch thunderstorms as they occur. It also comes with the option to receive notifications whenever strikes are detected in your area while you can also monitor the weather radar to track what could be coming.
Additional features include a history of hotspots where lightning strikes occur most often, more detailed information about where the thunderstorm is occurring and the ability to receive a lighting alarm when a storm is nearby so you can monitor it live. It is highly rated on both platforms due to its variety of uses.
EarthNetworks.com
Another website comes in the form of Earth Networks. With sophisticated data, it helps take out the guesswork from knowing where and when lightning strikes and storms happen.
It holds a worldwide network of sensors that detect lightning bolts and has established a presence in over 90 countries. Like My Lightning Tracker, this gives users more detailed information about where the thunderstorm is.
Blitzortung.org
Coming with an accompanying app, Blitzortung Lightning Monitor uses a map-based function that visualises real-time lightning data. Constantly updating to keep up-to-date with all the latest strikes, hours could be spent mulling over this map with its bright colours that move across the world as they develop.
It offers a fixed size, dynamic size and vector map varieties of visualisation, allowing their site to be used according to the needs of the user.
Radar-Live.com
This particular website covers all weather conditions, from a wind map, to air pollution, to hurricane data. Interestingly, their thunderstorm tracker allows you to rewind time, by the maximum of an hour, giving you a true insight into the shifts in thunder patterns.
It also adopts a colour scheme which helps identify the severity of each storm, allowing you to spot the hotspot of each instance. It states: “The weather radar map shows lightning and lets you determine how a storm moves. Check the storm warnings for the next few hours.”
