The LightningCast Dashboard is an excellent tool to monitor and predict the probability of lightning at a point, which allows us to easily provide decision support services (DSS) for outdoor events.

Here’s an example from today for the Clown Rodeo on the south side of Lubbock, TX:

Notice the LightningCast probabilities for both the ABI and ABI + MRMS generally remained between 0 to 20% during the duration of the event.

These probabilities were associated with developing cumulus clouds in the area, which can be seen in the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB:

Typically, if a meteorologist sees developing cumulus similar to shown above in the Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB, this would result in an increasing concern for lightning at that location. However, it is challenging to quantify this concern and message it probabilistically to our partners. LightningCast gave us confidence to message our partners there is a low probability (10 to 20%) of any lightning strikes within the next hour.

-Vrot