Use case

Lightning monitoring for outdoor events.

An evacuation call at a full venue is expensive, and so is making it late. Lightning API gives an operations room a live picture around the site, a webhook the moment a strike lands inside the venue ring, and the history to show afterwards exactly why the call was made.

See pricing Start free →

One ring, one decision

Venue safety plans almost always reduce to a distance and a clock: suspend when lightning is within a set distance, resume when nothing has been detected inside it for a set period. That maps directly onto a zone with a radius and a webhook.

Create a zone centred on the venue at the radius your safety plan specifies.
Point it at an endpoint your operations system already listens on.
Start a resumption timer on the last strike inside the ring, and reset it on each new one.
Keep the live map on a screen in the operations room for situational context.

The map in the operations room

A webhook tells you the threshold was crossed. It does not tell you whether the system is moving toward you or away. For that, a live map of recent flashes around the venue is worth the screen it occupies, and radar tiles under it show the cell structure driving the activity.

Recent flashes around a venue

curl "https://api.lightningapi.dev/v1/flashes" \
  -H "X-API-Key: lapi_your_key_here" \
  -G -d since_minutes=30 \
     -d min_lat=39.72 -d max_lat=39.82 \
     -d min_lon=-105.05 -d max_lon=-104.95

Paying for it seasonally

Event work is seasonal, and a plan that assumes year-round load is the wrong fit. Pay As You Go starts free with 5,000 calls a month and bills at $0.003 per call beyond it, so an out-of-season month costs nothing. Move to Pro when zone count rather than call volume becomes the constraint.

Recommended plan

Pro

A venue runs a small number of zones and a live map for the duration of an event, which fits inside the Pro monthly allowance comfortably, and the 20,000 row per call cap is far more than one site ever returns.

Compare plans

Frequently asked questions

Does this decide when to evacuate?

No. It reports lightning. The thresholds, the evacuation trigger, and the resumption rule stay yours, and should match whatever safety plan your venue already operates under.

Can I run several venues on one account?

Yes, one zone per venue. Zone count is capped by plan, so check the plan table if you are covering a whole festival circuit.

What does it cost for a single weekend event?

Pay As You Go includes 5,000 calls a month at no cost, which covers a weekend of polling comfortably. Beyond that it is $0.003 per call with a 100,000 call monthly cap.

Can I show the map to the public?

Browser access to the data is available from Pro upward. Check the licensing page if you intend to redistribute rather than display internally.

Is radar included?

Radar tiles are included on every plan with their own monthly allowance, covering the continental United States. How far back you can request frames depends on your plan, and the frames endpoint reports the window it will serve you.

Pricing Features Golf courses Lightning overlay in Leaflet

Last checked 2026-09-20

Features · Use cases · Guides · Incidents · Support · Status

Coverage areas

All regions · USA · Canada · South America · Mexico & Central America · Caribbean & Atlantic · Pacific, Hawaii & Alaska

Lightning data provided as-is; not for safety-critical use. Commercial use is permitted on every current plan. Read the EULA →