My Lightning Tracker is a great app for tracking lightning strikes worldwide in close to real time. The feature to alert you of lightning strikes close to you can be very valuable for hikers, specially during the summer when sudden thunderstorms are not rare.
Main Features
The main features of this app are:
- Displays lightning strikes in your region and all around the world
- Provides hotspots of locations with historically most lightning strikes
- Provides a radar view for the last two hours
- Provides notifications when lightning strikes are detected within the set radius
Using the App
Hikers can use the app in two ways.
One is to use it actively before and while you're hiking, together with other weather apps, to check whether there are any storms arriving. You start the app and on the main (map) screen check whether there were any lightning strikes recorded recently nearby. If there were, you turn to the "Radar" tab to see how the storm is progressing and it's path:
The other one is to allow the app to track your location at all times, even if the app is not actively used, in which case you will get a notification of nearby lightning strikes even if you haven't started the app yourself. This does mean that the app runs in the background at all times and consumes some resources and eventually the battery, but if you're hiking getting an alert about a nearby thunderstorm can be quite a valuable information.
Personally, I keep this option turned on at all times since I find it very valuable, but if being outdoor is not your regular activity, you may want to disable this app from tracking your location at all times, and instead enable it only before going out for hikes.
Once you receive the notification you can run the radar in some of your weather apps to check the path of the storm and take some action if necessary.
Thunderstorm notifications are only available if you have internet coverage!
How Lightning Strike Detection Works
When lightning strikes its discharge generates radio frequency pulses which can be received thousands of kilometers from their source as radio atmospheric signals, at a predictable frequency range. There are several lightning detection networks that use some of the sensors for lightning detection to record the frequency and intensity of these radio pulses and determine the position of the lightning strike through triangulation.
Companies that gather and accumulate this data sell it as a data feed to interested parties, including this mobile app.
Platform, Pricing and Rating
My Lightning Tracker is available in a free and a paid low-cost version, both on Android and on iOS. The free version has all the features that the paid version has, but contains ads.
Android
| Title | Pricing | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| My Lightning Tracker & Alerts | free, ad-supported |  |
| My Lightning Tracker Pro | one time cost 5USD, no ads |  |
iOS
| Title | Pricing | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| My Lightning Tracker & Alerts | free, ad-supported |  |
| My Lightning Tracker Pro | one time cost 5USD, no ads |  |
Final Verdict
This is a very useful app to have in your hiker app toolbox, with notifications of nearby lightning strikes being the highlight feature of the app.
