Check Out This Site That Shows You Real Time Lightning Strikes in New Jersey

Summer at the Jersey Shore means pop-up thunderstorms are the norm during the summer months.

I do love watching a thunderstorm through a window from the safety of my house or from under an overhanging roof on a porch. There is something so beautiful about a thunderstorm.

The word thunderstorm leaves off one of the coolest and most terrifying parts of a thunderstorm, the lightning.

I won't lie, I didn't know that thunder was the sound of lightning until I was an adult.

According to the National Weather Service, "Thunder is the sound caused by a nearby flash of lightning and can be heard for a distance of only about 10 miles from the lightning strike."

How many lightning strikes per year in the US?

This was the question I had when I found the website that tracks lightning strikes in real-time.

The CDC reports, "About 40 million lightning strikes hit the ground in the United States each year."

How can I track lightning strikes?

Let's start with the disclaimer from the website, "The data provided by Blitzortung.org is for entertainment purposes only. We are not liable for the completeness, timeliness, quality, and accuracy of the information on our website."

I did compare LightningMaps.org to a few weather websites and they seem to overlap nicely.

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LightningMaps.org lets you see recent lightning strikes all over the world.

When I checked New Jersey, I could see that there were a few storms off of our coast.

I cross-referenced this map with the National Weather Service's radar, which showed storms in those same areas.

I was really fascinated to see that there was a string of storms in a line from Norway to Greece.