2 hours ago
Hello,
I am working on a very small personal hobby project related to local thunderstorm forecasts and live lightning activity, and I would like to ask whether my intended use of Blitzortung data would be acceptable.
This is not a commercial product and I do not plan to monetize it. It will most likely remain a personal learning project used by myself and perhaps a few friends.
I am not a professional software developer. I have been building the project mainly with the help of AI coding tools while learning about lightning detection, weather forecasting and geospatial processing.
The project currently shows a simple local thunderstorm forecast. I would like to add a separate live-observation layer using Blitzortung data.
The intended use would be limited to simple informational summaries such as:
nearest recently detected lightning strike, number of recent detections within 10 / 25 / 50 km, time since the most recent nearby detection
At a later stage, I may also experiment with non-authoritative trend wording such as “activity appears to be approaching” or “moving away,” based on recent strike patterns. I understand that this would only be an approximation and would not be presented as a storm track, safety guarantee, or official warning.
I also understand that Blitzortung data must not be used as an official storm-warning or safety-critical system. The project would clearly state that it is informational only and that users should follow official meteorological and emergency guidance.
Technically, I would not want every browser to connect directly to Blitzortung. If permitted, my preferred setup would be a single server-side connection, very short-term in-memory retention of recent detections (for example up to 60 minutes), and only derived proximity information shown to the user.
Before proceeding, I would like to ask:
Thank you very much for your time and for maintaining such an interesting community project.
I am working on a very small personal hobby project related to local thunderstorm forecasts and live lightning activity, and I would like to ask whether my intended use of Blitzortung data would be acceptable.
This is not a commercial product and I do not plan to monetize it. It will most likely remain a personal learning project used by myself and perhaps a few friends.
I am not a professional software developer. I have been building the project mainly with the help of AI coding tools while learning about lightning detection, weather forecasting and geospatial processing.
The project currently shows a simple local thunderstorm forecast. I would like to add a separate live-observation layer using Blitzortung data.
The intended use would be limited to simple informational summaries such as:
nearest recently detected lightning strike, number of recent detections within 10 / 25 / 50 km, time since the most recent nearby detection
At a later stage, I may also experiment with non-authoritative trend wording such as “activity appears to be approaching” or “moving away,” based on recent strike patterns. I understand that this would only be an approximation and would not be presented as a storm track, safety guarantee, or official warning.
I also understand that Blitzortung data must not be used as an official storm-warning or safety-critical system. The project would clearly state that it is informational only and that users should follow official meteorological and emergency guidance.
Technically, I would not want every browser to connect directly to Blitzortung. If permitted, my preferred setup would be a single server-side connection, very short-term in-memory retention of recent detections (for example up to 60 minutes), and only derived proximity information shown to the user.
Before proceeding, I would like to ask:
- Would this type of small, non-commercial personal hobby use be acceptable?
- Which current live-data access method would you recommend for such a project?
- Is temporary in-memory retention of recent strikes acceptable for distance/count calculations?
- May derived information such as nearest-strike distance and recent strike counts be shown?
- Would optional proximity notifications such as “lightning activity detected nearby” fall under the prohibited storm-warning category, or could they be acceptable if clearly informational and non-authoritative?
- Are there any specific attribution, rate-limit, retention, geographic-scope, or redistribution requirements I should follow?
Thank you very much for your time and for maintaining such an interesting community project.