Lightning
Lightning on TerraPulse is organized into three Eventdexes — one slot per flash or report, each a measured record of a discharge that actually occurred. No estimates, no forecasts.
The dexes
The data lives across three parallel Eventdexes. Counts are live and grow with every fetch:
| Dex | Holds | Records |
|---|---|---|
lightning | Detected flashes — ground network plus satellite optical detection | 133,165 |
lightning_report | Lightning events from the storm record, with location and impact | 18,173 |
glm_event_window | Curated GLM flash windows carved around events of interest | windows |
The lightning and lightning_report dexes together hold about 151,000 measured flashes and
reports. The glm_event_window dex is a small, purpose-built collection: rather than storing
every flash, it holds a handful of time-bounded windows of GOES GLM flash data assembled around
specific events, so a study can pull the optical-lightning context for a moment of interest.
Provenance
Detected flashes in the lightning dex trace to the Blitzortung.org
community lightning-detection network and to GOES GLM — the Geostationary Lightning Mapper
aboard NOAA’s GOES-18 and GOES-19 satellites, which images optical lightning from geostationary
orbit. The glm_event_window dex draws on the same GLM instrument family (GOES-16). The
lightning_report dex traces to the NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database. Those sources are
registered against their dexes, so any record on TerraPulse carries a direct line back to its
originating detection.
What’s in a record
Each flash or report slot carries:
- Location — latitude and longitude of the strike or flash
- Time — detection time, UTC
- Detection type — ground-network geolocation or satellite optical
- Energy / signal — flash energy or signal strength where reported
- Impact — for storm-record entries, injuries, fatalities, and damage