Extreme Heat and Fire Weather Conditions in the West; Heavy Rain in the Southeast; Poor Air Quality

Extreme heat will begin to peak across the Desert Southwest. Multiple days of hot, dry and windy conditions are expected to bring fire weather concerns for portions of the Four Corners region into the central Great Basin and Rockies. Heavy rainfall and a flash flooding threat continues in the Southeast. Poor air quality persists from the Upper Midwest into the Northeast due to wildfire smoke. Read More >

Background

The lightning images below are updated daily around 7:30–8:30 AM and contain 24-h accumulations of lightning ending at 6 am MDT (5 am MST) each day. There are two sets of images for (1) NLDN cloud-to-ground flashes only and (2) GOES-East Lightning Mapper (GLM) cloud flash points. Option #1 only represents cloud-to-ground lightning flashes, and is based on a surface detection network. Option #2 does not discriminate between cloud-to-ground versus in-cloud flashes (i.e., it represents the total lightning) and is based on satellite. In-cloud lightning flashes can comprise 60–90% of the total lightning (i.e., most lightning does not reach the ground). Satellite-based lightning detection also does not depict the exact location where the flash occurred because of an issue known as "parallax." Mouse over each day to view the 24-h cumulative lightning flash maps. Printable versions are at the bottom of each of the three map segments.