Lightning Strikes Crane, Injures Man

7Online.com reports that during the mixed rain/snow event in South Orange, New Jersey Wednesday, a construction worker was injured when lightning struck a crane. He is now recovering in the hospital. In an average year, 67 people are killed by lightning. How can we help prevent this?

Lightning is not normally expected during the winter nor with snow, but it happens. It's tough to predict lightning and historically even lightning services for commercial clients (such as construction companies) have offered alerts of when lightning has struck close to you. When you think about it, that really doesn't make a lot of sense, since lightning can strike over 10 miles outside of a storm. It makes for a lot of false alarms and can't predict the first strike of the storm. But now there's something safer.

AccuWeather.com LightningPlus
PredictiveLightning Map*

A new lightning network that AccuWeather has partnered with, the U.S. Precision Lightning Network, actually predicts where lightning will strike. This service, called PredictiveLightning, is available to through our LightningPlus product. Alerts are issued when your specific location is under a threat of lightning in the next 30 minutes, so you can get your crews out before the first strike.

*PredictiveLightning Alerts are available in LightningPlus Silver, Gold or Platinum. PredictiveLightning Maps are available at an additional fee beyond the price of LightningPlus Platinum.