Strike accuracy question

[Quasar1011]

When zooming in on the maps so that the scale is 1000 feet (or 200 meters), the colored lightning strike dots will be surrounded by circles. The circles are different sizes. What does this mean? Is the position of the strike calculated more accurately, the smaller the circle?

This is my first post, and I didn't see this addressed elsewhere.

[cutty]

When zooming in on the maps so that the scale is 1000 feet (or 200 meters), the colored lightning strike dots will be surrounded by circles. The circles are different sizes. What does this mean? Is the position of the strike calculated more accurately, the smaller the circle?

This is my first post, and I didn't see this addressed elsewhere.

The short answer to your question is 'Yes'... the smaller the 'deviation' circle, the better 8 or more stations agreed on a 'location' based on GPS timing at stroke arrival at those stations.  The smaller the circle, the closer the timing computations resolve.  Not to be confused with the
"eye-candy" (if you will) moving thunder sonic front approximation (if enabled) on some 'real-time' maps...

Cheers!
Mike 

[Quasar1011]

The deviation circles now have time stamps on them, very cool!
But what are the numbers on the bottom? S: 11/28 or the like?
Does S mean Stations, and the numbers mean how many stations
detected a particular bolt? If so, what does the other number represent?

[Tobi]

Numbers represent stations to locate (= used for computation) and all assigned stations (= those that just detected the stroke)

[DelandeC]

If we use a higher number of stations for computation. Does it improve the accuracy or it has a kind of asymptotic behavior?

[Tobi]

The numbers are already that high, more stations wouldn't improve the accuracy significantly. Better computing algorithms will have much more impact on the accuracy. There's work in progress...

[andpaq]

Numbers represent stations to locate (= used for computation) and all assigned stations (= those that just detected the stroke)

Hello from Canada.
Sorry to resurrect such an old thread.  I had a close strike to my station a couple of days ago (within 1km) and it appeared on lightningmaps.org when it occurred with a yellow circle around it, which I assume is the "error bars" as per this thread.
But the strike seems to have disappeared from the archive.  If I look at historical data via lightningmaps.org UI, it isn't there.  And I've also downloaded the json files for that time and no strike is recorded then.  Yet it did appear at that time.  I'm just curious to know if this is normal and what causes that to happen?  (Not enough stations?)
Thanks!
Andre