Lightning activity across the USA reached its highest level in eight years in 2025, according to the Vaisala Xweather Annual Lightning Report 2025, with 252 million lightning strikes recorded nationwide.

The total represents a 20% increase compared with 2024. Globally, Vaisala’s lightning detection network recorded more than 2 billion lightning events in 2025, a 7% decrease year on year. The network captures more than 99% of thunderstorms worldwide, the company said.

The report highlights an unusually early peak in lightning activity. The most active lightning day of the year occurred on April 5, several weeks ahead of the typical May-September lightning season.

Continue reading US lightning activity reaches eight-year high in 2025, Vaisala report finds at Meteorological Technology International.

MIT researchers have unveiled a new lightning-prediction model that could help protect more unconventional aircraft designs – such as blended-wing bodies or truss-braced configurations – as aviation moves beyond traditional tube-and-wing designs.

According to MIT, more than 70 aircraft are struck by lightning each day, but the structure of today’s planes rarely sustain damage thanks to lightning protecting measures embedded in key zones throughout the aircraft. However, emerging aircraft designs present new aerodynamic and electrical behaviors, making existing lightning-zoning standards increasingly inadequate.

A team led by Carmen Guerra-Garcia, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics (AeroAstro) at MIT, has developed a physics-based simulation tool that predicts how lightning attaches to and sweeps across a plane with any design.

Continue reading MIT-developed lightning prediction tool targets safety of future aircraft at Meteorological Technology International.

Researchers at Arizona State University have used satellite-borne lightning detectors to measure a record-setting lightning megaflash that streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles during a major thunderstorm in October 2017. Its horizontal reach surpassed the previous record-holder by 38 miles yet went unnoticed until this re-examination of satellite observations of the storm.

Leveraging geostationary satellites

Satellite-borne lightning detectors in orbit since 2017 have made it possible to continuously detect lightning and measure it accurately at continental-scale distances. Parked in geostationary orbit, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-16 satellite detects around one million lightning flashes per day.

Continue reading Arizona State University discovers record-setting lightning with geostationary satellites at Meteorological Technology International.

NASA and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have partnered to launch the Injected Smoke and Pyrocumulonimbus Experiment (INSPYRE) field experiment, a multi-year collaborative effort aimed at improving predictive weather modeling through detailed analysis of wildfire-induced atmospheric behavior. The project is led by NRL and funded by NASA.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds

The scientists will look to better understand pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or pyroCbs, which are byproducts of the wildfires that are increasingly common around the world.

“These are thunderstorms that develop directly over large and intense wildfires,” said David Peterson, PhD, a meteorologist with NRL. “They act like giant chimneys, rapidly accelerating smoke particles high into the atmosphere.

Continue reading VIDEO: NASA and US Naval Research Laboratory study wildfire-induced thunderstorms at Meteorological Technology International.

A world-first multi-sensor detection of an intense gamma-ray flash has been observed by researchers from the University of Osaka, when two lightning leaders collided. Observations across a wide radiation spectrum enabled precise measurement of the electric current produced during this extreme event and demonstrated that the gamma-ray flash preceded the collision of the lightning leaders between the thundercloud and the ground.

The article Downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flash Associated with Collision of Lightning Leaders will be published in Science Advances. Led by researchers from the University of Osaka, it describes how the observation of the intense burst, known as a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), synchronized with a lightning discharge.

Continue reading University of Osaka performs first observation of gamma-ray burst unleashed by lightning collision at Meteorological Technology International.

Vaisala has introduced the Vaisala Elements helideck monitoring software which, it says, enables it to provide the offshore industry with a comprehensive and scalable helideck monitoring system (HMS).

Integrated instrumentation

As part of Vaisala’s comprehensive HMS, Elements integrates high-resolution vertical wind profiling from the WindCube lidar suite, advanced lightning detection and both graphical and data forecasts from Vaisala Xweather. With three major updates, offshore operators gain visibility into current and upcoming weather conditions across their installations. This includes vertical wind profile data to support helicopters and crane operations, as users can view wind conditions directly from offshore sites, up to 300m above deck level, with Vaisala WindCube Offshore lidar.

Continue reading Vaisala unveils helideck monitoring software for offshore operations at Meteorological Technology International.

Researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed an AI model that can predict where and when lightning strikes are most likely to cause wildfires, achieving over 90% accuracy.

Dr Oren Glickman and Dr Assaf Shmuel from the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University, in collaboration with experts from Ariel and Tel Aviv Universities, used seven years of high-resolution global satellite data, alongside detailed environmental factors like vegetation, weather patterns and topography, to map and predict lightning-induced wildfire risks on a global scale. The research was recently published in Scientific Reports.

The model was tested using wildfire data from 2021.

Continue reading AI model predicts lightning-induced wildfires with 90% accuracy at Meteorological Technology International.

Vaisala has been selected to modernize Greece’s weather monitoring infrastructure, operated by The Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS). The upgrade includes two separate contracts – one for the installation of seven dual-polarization C-band (WRM200) weather radars and another for the deployment of a lightning detection network with 12 LS7002 advanced lightning sensors.

The installation of the first two weather radars and the lightning sensor network is planned to take place before the end of 2025. The projects are intended to strengthen Greece’s severe-weather monitoring and response capabilities.

Building a more weather-resilient future

Panu Partanen, a vice president at Vaisala responsible for meteorology and aviation in the weather, energy and environment business unit, said, “With extreme weather events intensifying across the Mediterranean region, detailed and timely weather information is required to safeguard communities and infrastructure from natural disasters.

Continue reading Vaisala to deliver weather radar and lightning detection network across Greece at Meteorological Technology International.

Researchers at the China National Energy Key Laboratory of Lightning Disaster Detection, Early Warning and Safety Protection and the Laboratory of Lightning Monitoring and Protection Technology of State Grid Corporation of China have developed a deep learning-based nowcasting lightning model. This research has been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Data for the deep learning model

The research team used wide-area lightning monitoring data from the State Grid Corporation of China and geostationary satellite imagery, combined with convolutional gated recurrent unit (Conv-GRU) networks and attention mechanism modules, to develop the lightning nowcasting model.

Continue reading Deep learning model enhances lightning prediction at Meteorological Technology International.

The Department of Commerce and NOAA have announced US$250,000 in funding to support the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) model, which is expected to improve fire weather forecasts through better lightning prediction.

NOAA’s customized AI model LightningCast

This funding is part of a larger Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) investment to improve fire weather research from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. With the funding, the Center for Satellite Applications and Research, part of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS), and the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) are creating a customized version of LightningCast.

Continue reading Biden-Harris Administration invests US$250,000 in AI tool for wildland firefighting at Meteorological Technology International.