Air not detecting overhead lightning strikes

Tempest Owners
1

Hi,

My Air is detecting lightning strikes between 10-35 km distance very well and displays this in the app.

However overhead strikes are not reported via a push message from the app (maybe air does detect it, but doesnt display it in the app via a push message?).

The Air is positioned vertically in my garden.

Am I dooing something wrong?

2

most probably not. Remember that a lightning discharge is pretty strong, hence why those little devices can detect them so far but you can imagine that when a discharge is so close, they are just overloaded (deaf)

For Blitzortung stations we know when the lightning comes closer then 20 km, it just closes the gates and other stations take over for your close region.

I guess the air is having the same problem, when it is to close, it is just closing it’s poor ears to avoid permanent problems :grin:

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3

if you have notifications on, it will only report them when the newer detection is closer than the previous one, or when it is more than half an hour ago, So when it is overhead, it probably won’t get any closer and you don’t get extra notifications (if I remember correctly)

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4

that is also true @Sunny, notifications are related to distances and time

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5

…and antenna polarity. I did some tinkering with the Franklin chip used by WF for lightning detection, and the detection distance seems to be directional depending on board orientation…

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6

@mauriche . To clarify, are you saying that the AIR is not detecting the strikes and reporting the data per: https://smartweather.weatherflow.com/share/5043/graph/14365/lightning/3 . ??

Or, are you saying that you are not receiving push notifications for every lightning strike?

Remember, the lightning alert logic will only alert you of lightning in your area once every 30min unless a subsequent strike is closer than the last notification sent. See Lightning Alerts logic

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