2026-04-09

Struck

The sky keeps throwing matches. We count where they land.

Consumer-facing lightning intelligence — an automated, visual, opinionated site that turns satellite lightning detections, storm-event records, wildfire hotspots, and fatality data into county scorecards, seasonal risk maps, wildfire-ignition explainers, climate-shift analysis, and brutally useful articles for people who work, live, travel, or play under open sky.

Niche Explored

Lightning strike intelligence — data-driven journalism tracking lightning patterns, wildfire ignition, fatalities, climate-driven frequency shifts, county-level scorecards, and seasonal analysis using satellite + ground-truth data.

Existing Competition

Blitzortung.org / LightningMaps.org — community lightning detection network with real-time maps. Strengths: live visualization, global coverage, free. Gaps: NO analysis, no journalism, no trend reporting, no wildfire correlation, no fatality tracking, no climate context. Just dots on a map.
Vaisala Annual Lightning Report — one corporate PDF per year summarizing NLDN data. Behind Vaisala brand (they sell the hardware). Not consumer-facing, not frequent, not open.
NWS Lightning Safety pages — static government pages with annual fatality tables and basic safety tips. Updated sporadically. No maps, no visualizations, no storytelling. Data is there but presentation is government-grade.
Weather Underground / Weather.com — general weather sites that occasionally report on big storms. Lightning is an afterthought. No dedicated tracking or analysis.
Earth Networks (WeatherBug) — has a lightning detection network but data is commercial/proprietary. Not journalism.

GAP: Massive. The data is extraordinarily rich (satellite-level, ground-level, historical, real-time) and completely free. Nobody is doing automated lightning data journalism — beautiful maps, county scorecards, wildfire ignition tracking, seasonal trend reports, fatality pattern analysis, or climate shift documentation. The space is empty.

Data Sources Found

Primary — Satellite

NOAA GOES-16/19 GLM (Geostationary Lightning Mapper) — Free on AWS Open Data (s3://noaa-goes16/GLM-L2-LCFA/, s3://noaa-goes19/GLM-L2-LCFA/). NetCDF files with individual flash events, groups, and clusters. ~20-second latency. Covers Western Hemisphere. Free, unlimited, no API key needed. This is THE gold mine — orbital-level lightning detection with precise lat/lon, energy, and timing.
- URL: https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-goes/
- Format: NetCDF4
- Update: Every ~20 seconds during storm activity

Primary — Ground Truth

NCEI Storm Events Database — Bulk CSV download covering Jan 1950 to Dec 2025 (and ongoing). Includes Lightning event type with fatalities, injuries, property damage, crop damage, location (county/city/lat-lon), narratives. Free, no API key.
- URL: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ftp.jsp
- HTTP: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/stormevents/csvfiles/
- Format: CSV (gzipped)
- Update: Monthly

Primary — Fire Correlation

NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) — Free API for fire detection hotspots. CSV format. Can query by area + date range. MODIS and VIIRS sensors. Correlate lightning events with fire ignitions.
- URL: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/api/
- Format: CSV, KML
- API key: Free registration required

Primary — Fatality Tracking

NWS Lightning Fatality data — Annual detailed tables with date, state, city/county, age, sex, location, activity for every US lightning fatality. Published on weather.gov.
- URL: https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-fatalities
- Format: HTML (scrapeable), updated as events occur
- Historical: Back to 2006+

Secondary

NCEI Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) — Integrated database with shapefile, KMZ, CSV, XML access for severe weather records including lightning.
- URL: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/severe-weather-data-inventory
Blitzortung.org WebSocket feed — Real-time community lightning detections via WebSocket. Free for non-commercial use. Global coverage.
NOAA HRRR / GFS model data — Convective available potential energy (CAPE), storm forecasting. Free via NOMADS.
US Drought Monitor — For correlating dry conditions with lightning-ignition wildfire risk.

SEO Analysis

Keywords: “lightning strike map” (high volume, moderate competition — dominated by real-time maps, not analysis)
“lightning statistics” (moderate volume, LOW competition)
“lightning caused wildfires” (growing interest, especially during fire season)
“lightning deaths” / “lightning fatalities” (seasonal spikes, low competition)
“lightning climate change” (growing academic interest, almost zero consumer-facing content)
“where does lightning strike most” (evergreen, FAQ-style content)
Long-tail: “lightning strikes by county”, “lightning wildfire ignition”, “is lightning increasing”, “deadliest lightning months”
Opportunity: Google’s “People Also Ask” for lightning topics returns NWS government pages and Wikipedia. Zero dedicated data journalism sites.

Communities

r/lightning (~small but engaged)
r/weather (~800K+ members, lightning posts get strong engagement)
r/WeatherGifs (visual lightning content goes viral)
r/wildfire (lightning ignition is a major discussion topic)
Storm chaser communities (Twitter/X, Discord)
r/dataisbeautiful (lightning visualizations would perform well)
Fire weather Twitter/X community (NWS forecasters, wildfire agencies)
Amateur radio / atmospheric science hobbyists

Image/Graphic Feasibility

EXCELLENT — This niche is inherently visual:
- Lightning density heatmaps (generated from GLM data using D3.js or deck.gl)
- County scorecards with lightning strike counts, damage, fatalities
- Seasonal timeline charts (when lightning peaks by region)
- Lightning-to-wildfire correlation maps (overlay FIRMS fire hotspots on lightning data)
- Fatality demographics charts (age, activity, time of day, month)
- Climate trend line charts (annual flash counts over decades)
- Interactive maps with Mapbox/Leaflet
- AI-generated hero images of lightning storms (visually stunning niche)