The answer is the Tempest does have things that the AIR doesnât, both on the device itself (firmware) and in the âback-end smartsâ. Yes, in theory we could improve AIRâs reporting of lightning using the same approach taken with Tempest. We may decide to tackle that in the future, but we are not doing that yet. As a practical result, lightning reported by Tempest will generally be better than AIR.
PS: My statement that âTempest is more than just hardwareâ IS a general statement that includes more than just the Tempest hardware device. AIR & SKY are more than just hardware too and, in fact, are part of the overall Tempest System!
PPS: It is a bit of a semantic challenge to distinguish the âTempest Hardwareâ separately from the âTempest Systemâ. We recognize that we probably need a better name for the piece of hardware that is currently referred to as âthe Tempestâ but we donât have one yet. For now, the piece of hardware that you install at your house is âthe Tempestâ and everything else (including the piece of hardware) is the âTempest System.â