Uses of Lightning Data by U.S. Government Agencies

On January 13, 2005 the National Weather Service signed a new contract for lightning data with Vaisala, Inc. This contract covers a period of five years, one base year plus four one-year options. The contract allows any Federal Government agency to purchase real-time lightning data from the 48 contiguous states and long range marine data. Both cloud-to-ground and in-cloud data are available. Users may also obtain archived data and vendor-generated products under this contract. The contract is very flexible allowing each Government agency to select the data it wants from the geographic area it wants. This paper describes the many uses of lightning data by government agencies and how this contract can help other agencies obtain and use both cloud-to-ground and in-cloud lightning data in their application.