For context, there ended up being no lightning within 15 miles of the DSS event. With storms developing on the Laramie Range and the event in Fort Laramie, this case was excellent given developing convection upstream. The LightningCastV1 and V2 looked different despite having no radar data from KCYS. Near the beginning, LightningCastV1 appears more bullish on the 10% and 30% contour nearly over the event range ring while the V2 is closer to the western edge of the 15 mile range ring.

Figure 1: LightningCast-ECONUS-compare panel.

LCv1 vs LCv2 probabilities for GOES-East and GOES-West were the most interesting results of this case. Objectively, the GOES-East V2 chances for lightning ended up performing the best with no strikes. The environment supported dominant left splits which ended up happening with 2 storms. The southwestern storm ultimately decayed but the lingering weak right mover was slightly problematic for chances of lightning near the end of the event with cloud flashes near Bordeaux, WY. The northwestern storm initiated near Laramie peak and ultimately threw a dominant left split away from the DSS event. The most interesting part was the chance of lightning from the 4 options ranged from nearly 20% to nearly 75% around 2120 UTC. What was notable at that time on the radar was the dying right split SW of Bordeaux, WY, and the dominant left split was moving away from the DSS radar just west of Sibley peak, WY which would make me think of lightning potential being very low. This is not to diminish the potential of the product but to raise awareness that different data sources resulted in a 65% difference in chances for lightning.

Figure 2: LCv1 vs LCv2 probabilities for GOES-East and West.

Dry Thunderstorms