Météorage, a subsidiary of Météo-France, and Radarmeteo, a provider of professional meteorological services, have teamed up to form a partnership that will distribute lightning and thunderstorm detection services in Italy.
Météorage operates a lightning and thunderstorm detection network in Europe and has recently acquired CESI-SIRF – the historical lightning monitoring system of Centro Elettrotecnico Sperimentale Italiano in Italy.
In addition to the new network, platforms and applications are available for users in the utility, energy, airport, agricultural and land reclamation, telecommunications, traffic and transportation, maritime, and oil and gas sectors. These provide nowcasting services incorporating the latest scientific and technological advances and integrated, feature-rich services.
According to the two companies, the partnership stems from the need to provide a solution for all users whose activities are affected by severe weather events that are typically characterized by high intensity and a high degree of localization, such as lightning, cloudbursts, hail, strong winds and tornadoes.
On average, Italy experiences thunderstorms on 245 days per year, making it the country most affected by lightning in Western Europe. In 2018, a record year, slightly fewer than one million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes were detected, which corresponds to almost 50% of the total keraunic activity detected throughout the country.
“Lightning is an extreme natural weather event in Italy and preventing risks to people and installations is a major challenge,” explained Dominique Lapeyre de Chavardès, president of Météorage. “Météorage, a European leader in this highly specialized sector, has therefore installed a detection network throughout Italy with unrivaled levels of performance. The partnership with Radarmeteo brings together two companies that cultivate common values of professionalism and exigency. It will allow users who demonstrate a need to access combined meteorology and lightning information services to optimize the management of these risks.”
“Radarmeteo bases its commercial policy on providing advanced and innovative data and services, but also on the wealth of information that the observation set has accumulated over the years,” added Massimo Crespi, CEO of Radarmeteo. “In the field of lightning and thunderstorms, the partnership with Météorage combines both these inspirations: on the one hand, the most advanced technology, and on the other, the historical tradition of observations that has given us the most extensive national archive of keraunic activity since 1994.”
