Distinguish the most destructive types of lightning that are the most likely to cause fires and property damage.

Vaisala has launched its new patented lightning offering in the U.S. The industry breakthrough detects which cloud-to-ground lightning strokes are most likely to cause damage to property or start wildfires.

“Until now, no one had the ability to identify the strokes that fall into this category,” said Markus Melin, Vice President of Vaisala Digital. “For the first time, decision-makers have the information required to target – and mitigate the impact of – the lightning events most likely to cause extreme heat damage.”

This new patented offering utilises Vaisala's proprietary National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN)  and Global Lightning Dataset GLD360capabilities, plus both Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – GOES-16 and GOES-17 – to deliver the highest quality information that identifies strokes with continuing current and an estimate of their duration.

“This new capability paints a fuller picture to find the truly damaging lightning strokes,” said Dr. Ryan Said, Lightning Senior Scientist at Vaisala. “Our patented new offering significantly advances lightning detection by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of inspection operations and identifying where organizations should focus their oftentimes limited resources, whether it’s damage to infrastructure or wildfire-start locations.”

Fewer than 10% of lightning strokes have continuing current, which can persist up to 1,000 times as long and are more likely than a typical lightning stroke to cause fire or other extreme heat-related damage.

 Vaisala’s new lightning offers faster identification and more effective inspection of likely damaged areas or areas in which a fire started and warning alertsthat infrastructure is likely to have been seriously damaged. In addition users benefit from early intervention to prevent more extensive damage to assets and cost reduction by prioritizing post-storm inspections of assets and infrastructure likely to have been damaged.