The Finnish Meteorological Institute has added a new lightning service to its range of Internet weather services.

The new service is based on a lightning positioning system which shows the lightning situation in the whole of Finland and regionally, on an almost real-time basis. The service will be available from April to October and also includes precipitation radar animation allowing users to observe the movements and intensity of rainy areas in Finland and nearby regions. Individual lightning data includes the co-ordinates and intensity of each lightning strike and the time of occurrence.

The service enables people to anticipate an approaching thunderstorm and prepare for lightning. The service will benefit companies responsible for maintaining power supply pylons and networks, or those companies that switch to their own backup power instead of the national power grid during a thunderstorm, for example. Fault detection in the power supply grid will be faster when the exact locations of strikes are known.

A wide selection of tailored weather services is provided for different target groups in Finland. Agricultural producers, construction and maintenance companies, power plants and private citizens can order locality-specific weather information by email, fax or SMS messages on their GSM phone.

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