I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on sources of near real-time lightning strike data available for download? For example, Intellicast.com has a map of strikes, but makes no mention of the source of the data they used.
Key attributes would be date/time and lat/long (any additional is just bonus), and strikes that occurred as much as 24 hours previously are logged and available. It could be in a text/table form (which can be converted to a spatial table), but if it is in a GIS ready format, that would be great too.
I know of a couple of paid sources:
- Vaisala
- WeatherBank
- USPLN, NAPLN, and GLN. (Update: Apparently Intellicast gets its data from WSI Corp, which runs the USPLN).
Other sources I have stumbled across:
- blitzortung.org- I haven't figured out how to get the source strike data from the site
- According to an 2007 blog entry, GuiWeather.com used to supply weather data to Google Earth, but the site is no longer active.
Is anyone aware of any other paid/free sources of lightning strike data?
UPDATE: Someone posted & deleted a good website for many resources of lightning data. The NWA Remote Sensing Committee. It provides a good overview of research and data providers, too.