About the data

The real-flash ritual pairs your words with one lightning flash recorded minutes earlier by NOAA’s GOES-19 weather satellite. Its Geostationary Lightning Mapper watches the Americas and nearby oceans from orbit, all day and night, and records the time, location, optical energy and size of each flash.

A satellite sees the light of a flash from above the clouds. It cannot tell whether the lightning reached the ground, and it does not measure electrical current, so Struck never claims either. Each real flash is paired with exactly one ritual and never reused.

The storm you watch is an illustration. In the free ritual it is a hand-drawn storm and is labeled “Illustrated storm.” In the real-flash ritual it is an illustration of the recorded flash, not a video of it. Keepsake artwork is generated from the flash’s data. It is not an image of the actual bolt.