National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Severe Weather Outbreak Across the Central U.S.

A severe-weather outbreak continues across a large portion of the Mississippi Valley. Multiple strong tornadoes have occurred, and long track storms remain likely. Swaths of intense damaging wind gusts along with very large hail are expected as well. Heavy snow and blowing snow will produce travel hazards in the Upper Midwest. Read More >

Seattle, WA

Center Weather Service Unit

Satellite Radar Lightning Loop

Weather.gov > Seattle, WA > Satellite Radar Lightning Loop

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                     Update ⇒          Play/Pause      Last Frame           ⟺ ⛶
Radar Legend
Lightning Legend		 SIGMET/CWA:
IFR  Turbulence
Icing  Convective
Vol Ash  Other SIGMET
Other CWA  (CWAs Dashed) 		Flight Category:
VFR  MVFR
IFR  LIFR 		Weather Shading:
Convective   Freezing
Winter   Smoke/Ash
Liquid   Fog/Haze


The above loop uses radar and visible/IR satellite data obtained from Aviation Weather Center (AWC), GeoColor satellite data from NOAA NESDIS-STAR, lightning (GLM) data from NOAA nowCOAST, and observations (for flight category and weather) from MesoWest. The radar, lightning, visible satellite, IR satellite, GeoColor satellite, SIGMETs/CWAs, and flight categories/weather can be toggled on/off. On the GeoColor satellite images (GOES-West/East cutoff at -114°) the pale bule areas are nighttime areas of lower clouds. Also, GeoColor images may occasionally miss a frame or two. When both the flight category and weather are displayed, the flight category icon will be on the inside and the partially-transparent weather color on the outside. Clicking on the map will start/stop the loop. Left-clicking on the "Speed" area will slow the loop and right-clicking will accelerate the loop, ranging from 0.05 to 5 second interval. To toggle the lower-left menu visible/hidden, click the ≪ or ≫ button. To expand the radar map, keeping the menus/options above and legend below, click ⟺ (include "&invert" in the URL to reverse the background/text colors). To maximize the radar map only click Maximize. Additional URL parameters include lt (center latitude), ln (center longitude), zm (zoom level, 0-12), nolabel (removes flight category icon ID labels), hidemenu (hides the menu options on the lower left), wide (thicken US state boundaries), county (include US counties and other political boundaries based on zoom level), hidefir (hide FIR boundary), zseareas (add the ZSE ARTCC areas), and start (UTC start date/time, YYYYMMDDhhmm format, AWC data goes back up to 2 days, GLM data up to 5 hours). The URL should auto-update with the current settings, allowing for an easy bookmark/favorite. The NWS Radar page and NWS Satellite page also are available.

This page will be updated to a more robust version including PIREPs by the end of April.

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