A text to your staff is not a substitute for a course horn or siren. It won't reach a foursome on 14. Your horn clears the course. Lightning Ward tells the pro shop when to sound it and when to call the all-clear, and keeps the record of both.
A text to the pro shop and the grounds crew when lightning is detected within 20 miles of your clubhouse, another at 15, and the stop operations alert at 10 — each with the distance and direction of the closest strike, plus any National Weather Service thunderstorm forecast or watch in effect for that address. The all-clear waits for 30 strike-free minutes.
Set up in under 2 minutes · No app for anyone to install · Cancel anytime
Each stage sends once per storm. No repeats, no chatter. Every text the pro shop gets means something changed. The three warning texts also carry the National Weather Service forecast for your address, looked up fresh each time, so you can make the best call on when to bring the course in.
Lightning is in the area, with distance and direction. Nothing stops. The pro shop and the superintendent know it's out there.
It's closing. Time for the starter to hold the tee sheet and for the crew to start working back in from the far holes.
All play and grounds operations must stop. That's the pro shop's cue to sound the horn — not the first clap of thunder.
Thirty strike-free minutes, then play resumes. Every new strike restarts the clock — the step that's easiest to get wrong.
Not every storm announces itself. A cell that forms directly overhead can put lightning inside 10 miles with nothing detected further out — those sites get the stop operations alert first and nothing before it. The early stages are what we can see coming.
No weather station on the clubhouse roof, no app for anyone to download. If the starter can get a text, the starter's covered.
Enter the clubhouse address and the numbers that get alerts — the pro shop, the starter, the superintendent, and whoever is running the grounds crew that day. A typical 18-hole course runs roughly a mile from the clubhouse to its far corner, which is small against a 10-mile ring, so the whole property sits inside it with room to spare. We watch the airspace around it around the clock, out to 20 miles.
Lightning inside 20 miles sends an advisory; inside 15, a watch. Each names the distance and direction of the closest strike, alongside what the National Weather Service has published for that address — the hours thunderstorms are forecast, any watch or warning in effect, and the course's closing time if you've set operating hours. One text per stage, per storm. Nobody's phone buzzes for nothing.
A strike inside 10 miles sends the stop operations alert, and the pro shop sounds the horn. Then, after 30 consecutive strike-free minutes, every contact gets the all-clear at the same moment, so the course reopens on one call — not on whichever group decided the sky looked fine.
Built for superintendents, head pros and GMs who want a lightning call they can stand behind — not another dashboard to babysit.
Three tiers instead of one, around your clubhouse coordinates — not a county-wide alert for the whole metro. The early tiers are what nobody on the course can do alone: you can hear thunder at ten miles, not see a cell at twenty.
Each warning carries what the National Weather Service has published for that exact address — the hours thunderstorms are forecast, any watch or warning in effect, and when the course is due to close. The near view and the longer one in a single message, so nobody opens a weather app to decide whether to pull the course. We relay the Weather Service; we don't forecast anything ourselves.
Groups spread across eighteen holes, a mower on the far fairway, a sprayer halfway through the greens — none of that is back at the clubhouse the second a horn sounds. That's why the ladder starts at 20 miles instead of 10: the advisory and the watch buy back the minutes it takes to bring everyone in.
Every new strike resets the clock. The all-clear only goes out after a full 30 strike-free minutes, so a lull between two cells doesn't send groups back out early.
The course gets a shareable status page with a live strike map, radar overlay, countdown, and the next twelve hours from the National Weather Service. Keep it open behind the pro shop counter or pin it in the staff group chat — no login, nothing to explain.
Add every number that needs to know when play and grounds operations stop — the pro shop, the starter, the superintendent, the crew out mowing. Every contact gets every stage at the same time. No radio relay, nobody on a mower who didn't hear the call.
Plain SMS. No app to install, no accounts for the people receiving alerts, nothing to keep updated. It works on a flip phone in a dead zone of app-store coverage.
Every strike, alert, and all-clear is logged with a timestamp. Export a clean PDF report for any date range — when each stop alert went out, when the all-clear followed, and how many contacts were texted. Ready for your GM, your board, or a member asking why the course closed at 2:40.
Every plan includes full monitoring, staged SMS alerts with the National Weather Service forecast, all-clear timers, and live status pages. No contracts, no sales calls — cancel anytime.
Prices are per company, not per user. Annual billing works out to roughly two months free.
Running more than 25 sites? Contact us for Enterprise pricing — volume rates, priority support.
Something else on your mind? Email us — a real person answers.
Give the pro shop a distance instead of a guess — it takes about two minutes to set up.
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