Storms off the the west in New Mexico approaching our DSS location in far NW Texas were a great way to test the LightningCast and the associated LightningCast Dashboard. Our DSS location was focused on the “Rita Fire” that was along Hwy 385 between Dalhart, TX and Boise City, OK and partners wanted notice of a 50% probability of lightning within one hour within a 25 nm radius around the fire. Convection was ongoing across NE New Mexico one storm showing deviant motion. This storm was warned on at 2043Z for 1.5″ hail and winds of 60 mph based primarily on radar; however, Octane was being used to monitor the storm as it tracked southeastwards towards the CWA boundary. Octane showed consistent divergent signatures in the direction product and good speed decreases on the upshear side of the updraft before being contaminated by an anvil from another storm to the southwest.

While it was nice that the LightningCast Dashboard allows you to choose different time ranges and an auto refresh rate per a drop-down, I think some other options might be more helpful for support of an event. To help provide a head’s up to partners, it would be valuable to have an option to input a specified area that you would like to be alerted for…with the option of inputting those criteria. For example, being able to have a range ring or being able to draw a polygon for the area of interest and then inputting lightning criteria in there to alert you when those values are reached within your range ring or polygon. The criteria provided for the Rita Fire of 50% probability within the range ring would have alerted us on the Dashboard that the threshold had been reached. As far as the LightningCast product overall…it was an excellent resource for monitoring then alerting the Rita Fire partners once their criteria had been reached. A quick screen grab can be sent to partners as well to indicate where the greatest lightning threat probabilities are located.