About the data

The real-flash ritual pairs your words with one lightning flash recorded minutes earlier by one of NOAA’s two GOES weather satellites. Each carries a Geostationary Lightning Mapper that watches from orbit, all day and night, and records the time, location, optical energy and size of every flash. GOES-19 sees the Americas and the Atlantic; GOES-18 sees the Pacific side, from the west coast of the Americas out past Hawaii. Where their views overlap, a flash counts once, from the satellite nearer to it. Your certificate names the satellite that saw your flash.

Together they cover the Western Hemisphere, roughly between 52° North and 52° South. Lightning over Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia is not in their view, so it never appears here yet.

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.