Lightning Radar vs Downstrike

Lightning Radar shows you where lightning is striking, around you and around the world, in real time. LIGHTNING ALERTS Now you can be warned before a storm reaches you. Turn on Lightning Alerts and get a notification when strikes land within your chosen radius, around where you are and around any saved places you choose to watch. The alerts step up as a storm closes in, and they are tuned not to over-notify: once it is right on top of you, they stop repeating. Tap an alert to jump straight to that strike on the map. Alerts stay off until you switch them on, and you can turn them off any time. Turn on Background location and they can follow you as you move, still sending only the same coarse grid cell, so you stay covered on the road as well as at home. ON YOUR LOCK SCREEN While a storm is nearby, a Storm Live Activity keeps the nearest-strike distance on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets show the live count of strikes near you at a glance. NEARBY RADAR See the closest strike to you at a glance: how far away it is, which direction it's in, and how long ago it hit. An animated radar dial sweeps through the strikes within your chosen range and turns to your compass heading, so "up" is the way you're facing. Set the range anywhere from 5 km out to 5,000 km. NEARBY ACTIVITY A live chart shows strikes per minute near you over the last several minutes, so you can tell whether a storm is building or moving off. Tap any strike to jump straight to it on the map. LIVE WORLD MAP Every strike detected by the Blitzortung.org volunteer network appears within seconds. From each one a ring spreads outward at the speed of sound, the way thunder travels, so you can watch a storm move and sense how far off it is. MADE TO EXPLORE • Search any place and jump to it • Save the spots you care about for one-tap access • Switch between a light or dark map • Distances in kilometres or miles • A live readout shows how far behind real time the feed is running IN YOUR LANGUAGE Lightning Radar is translated into 35 languages, from the map and the radar to alerts, widgets and the Storm Live Activity. It follows the language your phone is set to, or you can give the app a language of its own in Settings. Distances, dates and times follow whichever you pick. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no sign-up, no tracking, no ads, no third-party analytics. The map and radar run entirely on your device: your precise location is used only to place the radar around you and never leaves your phone. Lightning Alerts are the one exception, and only if you turn them on. To work out which strikes are near you, the app sends an anonymous notification token, your alert radius, and a coarse location: a grid cell roughly a fifth of your radius across, never your exact position. That goes to our own server (on our own hardware in the EU), is used only to find nearby lightning and deliver the alert through Apple, and is tied to no identity. Turn alerts off and it is deleted. ABOUT THE DATA Strike data comes from Blitzortung.org, a community network of volunteer-run detectors, and is free for personal, non-commercial use. Coverage isn't perfect and strikes can be missed or delayed, so please don't rely on Lightning Radar for anything safety-critical.

Downstrike is a live lightning map centered on your home. Strikes appear seconds after they flash — then cool from white to ember as they age, so every storm paints its own trail across the dark map. THE MAP • Live strikes from Blitzortung.org, a worldwide network of volunteer radio receivers that hears every bolt and locates it with a stopwatch • Thunder rings expand from each strike at the real speed of sound — when a ring crosses your house, that's the moment the rumble arrives • Distance rings at 10, 25 and 50 km, with an amber glow that points toward approaching activity • Wind flow particles and a rain radar layer • Real thunder, synthesized live: sharp booms up close, long low rumbles far away — at each strike's true distance NO STORM NEARBY? Tap the big glowing bolt. It flies you to the most active storm on Earth at that moment — there is always one somewhere. STORM WARNINGS (US) Turn on notifications and your phone buzzes when the National Weather Service issues a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning for where you are — even with the app closed. Plus a minute-by-minute rain forecast for the next hour, powered by Apple Weather. HONEST BY DESIGN Free, no accounts, no ads, no tracking. Your address stays on your device; if you enable warnings, only your approximate location (about 1 km) is stored to check official alerts — and turning them off deletes it. Downstrike is for learning and storm-watching fun. It is not an emergency service — in dangerous weather, follow official guidance. Made by Leo and Noah Zimmerman, a father-and-son team, with help from Claude. Lightning data thanks to the volunteers of Blitzortung.org. Map © CARTO, © OpenStreetMap contributors. Wind by Open-Meteo. Radar by RainViewer.