Peter
2006-07-27 07:00:03 UTC
I've been doing some web searching.
There are basically two ways to detect storms: detecting the
electrical discharges, and weather radar which detects water content.
The first is much easier, using a technology used in airborne
"stormscope" equipment, also known as sferics
http://edot.lanl.gov/ildc2000/node2.html
which uses a cheap receiver. There are many private (DIY)
installations around the world, many of which are networked via the
internet and the composite data is available free of charge.
The second (radar) is a lot more expensive, and is run by the various
national weather services. Historically, one always had to pay to get
this, but a lot of it is now "leaking" out onto the internet.
With sferics, it's important to use a multi-station composite picture,
because individually, the range can be anything up to 2x out - I know
this from flying behind a WX500 stormscope.
I have collected a few sites here (done by googling for certain
keywords):
http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/sferics.html
One of the most interesting is the "downloadable java viewer" link.
Unzip the zipfile (3 files) into some folder, make a desktop shortcut
to lview.exe, and you have an all-Europe display produced by
correlating the data from many sferics sites. Amazing!!
Moving onto weather radar, this site (which I found in Usenet)
http://www.chmi.cz/OPERA/
contains links to some radar feeds
http://www.chmi.cz/OPERA/links.php#rdata
which includes the UK animated data
http://www.metoffice.com/weather/europe/uk/radar/animation.html
but it appears about 1 hour behind real time.
France is here
http://www.meteofrance.com/FR/mameteo/sat.jsp
I also found
http://www.buienradar.nl/home.aspx?r=.peter2000.co.uk&jaar=-3&soort=loop1uur
which includes a chunk of the UK and is about 5-10 minutes behind real
time.
Radar data will be more accurate than stormscope but it's distributed
a lot less. There is more of it around on pay sites.
I hope this is helpful.
There are basically two ways to detect storms: detecting the
electrical discharges, and weather radar which detects water content.
The first is much easier, using a technology used in airborne
"stormscope" equipment, also known as sferics
http://edot.lanl.gov/ildc2000/node2.html
which uses a cheap receiver. There are many private (DIY)
installations around the world, many of which are networked via the
internet and the composite data is available free of charge.
The second (radar) is a lot more expensive, and is run by the various
national weather services. Historically, one always had to pay to get
this, but a lot of it is now "leaking" out onto the internet.
With sferics, it's important to use a multi-station composite picture,
because individually, the range can be anything up to 2x out - I know
this from flying behind a WX500 stormscope.
I have collected a few sites here (done by googling for certain
keywords):
http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/sferics.html
One of the most interesting is the "downloadable java viewer" link.
Unzip the zipfile (3 files) into some folder, make a desktop shortcut
to lview.exe, and you have an all-Europe display produced by
correlating the data from many sferics sites. Amazing!!
Moving onto weather radar, this site (which I found in Usenet)
http://www.chmi.cz/OPERA/
contains links to some radar feeds
http://www.chmi.cz/OPERA/links.php#rdata
which includes the UK animated data
http://www.metoffice.com/weather/europe/uk/radar/animation.html
but it appears about 1 hour behind real time.
France is here
http://www.meteofrance.com/FR/mameteo/sat.jsp
I also found
http://www.buienradar.nl/home.aspx?r=.peter2000.co.uk&jaar=-3&soort=loop1uur
which includes a chunk of the UK and is about 5-10 minutes behind real
time.
Radar data will be more accurate than stormscope but it's distributed
a lot less. There is more of it around on pay sites.
I hope this is helpful.