DISCLAIMERS AND ACCURACY NOTES FOR BOLTEK DETECTOR (MAPS):

• GENERAL DISCLAIMER
• NOTES ON THE RANGE OF THIS DETECTOR
• HOW TO READ THE ANALYSIS DISPLAY
• WARNING ON OCCASIONAL BOGUS STORMS TO NORTHWEST
• WARNING ON OCCASIONAL TESTING OF CHANGES TO PARAMETERS
• GREATEST HITS - OUR MOST IMPRESSIVE SCREENS

HOW TO READ THE ANALYSIS SCREEN

(1). Real-Time Lightning Window

This screen is the meat of the product, and is always available by itself as a larger image on the Lightning Display page, and is also available as a high quality bitmap image. This screen can be zoomed out all the way out to about 750 miles range. See NOTES ON RANGE. The map is centered on WeatherMatrix Headquarters in State College, Pennsylvania, USA. Recent (last 60 seconds) lightning strikes are in red, and older strikes (this varies based on what we set it to, usually it is 20 or 60 minutes) are in yellow.

IN SOME CASES A "RAW" DATA SCREEN (SEEN AT RIGHT) MAY DISPLAY INSTEAD OF THE REAL-TIME LIGHTNING DATA SCREEN. This happens when the Lightning/2000 software is first started, and it does not have enough data to "guess" where the storms are. We may also switch to this screen if we want to display data when very few strikes are being detected - in this case Lightning/2000 may choose not to draw the storms on the screen. The raw data screen shows direction and strength but NOT distance.

The map is zoomed into different areas to pick up what is interesting. We do make an attempt to cover all areas with lightning, and when someone is not monitoring the lightning computer, we attempt to leave it zoomed out into an area where lightning is likely. HOWEVER, we do maintain the right to center the map where we want, and we may zoom it into central Pennsylvania if there is a strong storm near HQ. If you are unsure of where the map is located, look for the circular range rings and estimate its location by using the Analysis Screen (see #4 below), which is usually left zoomed out.

It also contains a copy of the Detector Activity Window (see #2 below), and a copy of the Strokes In Last 60 Seconds number from the Counters Window (see #3 below). The background behind this number will turn yellow or red depending on the number (see #3 below for specifications).

(2). Dectector Activity Window

This is a simple LED-type readout of the instantaneous lightning activity at the time the screen was captured. It is not much use in a screen capture.

(3). Counters Window

This window contains statistics about the current and daily information collected from the Boltek detector. Each box is explained above. "Strokes" are strokes of lightning detected (cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-air, and cloud-to-ground). "Noises" are bogus interference "strokes" detected, caused by interference by the PC itself, and other situations in which the detector feels that it was not an actual stroke of lightning. "Energy" is an algorithm calculated by the Lightning/2000 software to represent the total electrical energy being detected.

(4). Analysis Window

This window gives an approximation of where the storms might lie on the map. The plot on the Real-time lightning window is a best guess scenario; the Analysis Window displays a "pie slice" within which it feels the storm is confident. If these storms are within 100 miles, they will be colored red. 200 miles - yellow. Elsewhere outside that - green. We attempt to keep this window fairly zoomed out, despite where we might zoom into the Real-time lightning window.

(5). Stroke Rate History Window

This screen is a graph of the last 24-hours of strokes. The height of the graph adjusts to the maximum number of strokes per minute, which is printed on the graph along with the time that it occurred.

(6). Description Bar

This bar describes the current situation in general, based on the number and proximity of storms. It turns green when little activity is detected, yellow when thunderstorms within 200 miles are detected, and red when storms within 100 miles are detected.