Help & how it works

How alerts work

Lightning Ward watches a 10-mile radius around each of your registered sites, around the clock, using real-time strike data from Xweather's national lightning detection network — the same professional-grade data used across the weather industry.

When the first strike is detected inside that radius, every alert contact on the site gets a text message, and a 30-minute countdown starts. Any additional strike inside the radius silently resets the countdown to 30 minutes — you won't get a new text for every strike, because during a storm that would mean dozens of texts.

When a full 30 consecutive minutes pass with no strikes inside the radius, every contact gets an all-clear text. That's the whole cycle: one alert when the threat starts, one all-clear when it's safely over.

Early warnings before the alert

By the time lightning is within 10 miles, outdoor operations should already be shut down — not starting to shut down. So Lightning Ward also watches farther out and sends up to two advance texts as a storm approaches: an advisory when lightning is detected within 20 miles and a watch when it moves within 15 miles. Each includes the distance and direction of the closest strike.

Each advance text is sent at most once per storm, and only as the storm moves closer. A storm that passes by at 14 miles and never threatens your site simply goes quiet — no follow-up chatter. After 30 minutes with no lightning inside 20 miles, the cycle resets so the next storm gets its own warnings. We deliberately don't predict "minutes until shutdown": storms change speed and direction too quickly for that number to be trustworthy, and a wrong promise is worse than none.

The forecast inside each warning

All three warning texts — the 20-mile advisory, the 15-mile watch and the 10-mile stop operations alert — carry a short paragraph of context underneath the warning itself. It has up to three parts, and any part with nothing to report is simply left out:

• Your site's closing time, if you've set operating hours. Omitted for a site that runs around the clock.
• The National Weather Service hourly thunderstorm window for your site's coordinates over the next twelve hours — for example, "thunderstorms from 1 PM to 7 PM." If their hourly forecast doesn't mention thunderstorms in that window, the sentence is absent.
• Any active National Weather Service watch or warning covering your site, with its expiry time.

This is a restatement of what the Weather Service has published, for your exact coordinates rather than a county-wide product. We don't change it, add to it, or turn it into a prediction of our own — no clear times, no probabilities, no estimates of how long a storm will last.

It repeats on every rung, on purpose. The advisory and the stop operations alert can arrive hours apart, and the Weather Service republishes hourly, so the context is looked up fresh for each message and the three can differ. Every text has to stand on its own — nobody should have to scroll back through a thread to find the forecast while deciding whether to stop outdoor operations.

If the Weather Service is slow or unreachable, the warning goes out on time without the forecast. A lightning message is never delayed or dropped because a forecast lookup was slow. You can also see the next twelve hours, and any active watch, on your site's status page.

Who gets which message: everyone. Every contact on the site with SMS consent receives all three tiers — the 20-mile advisory, the 15-mile watch, and the 10-mile stop operations alert — at the same time. There is no separate supervisor list.

Not every storm arrives from a distance. A cell that develops directly over a site can put lightning inside 10 miles with nothing detected further out, and in that case the stop operations alert is the first message you get. Our detection also reaches about 25 miles, so a fast-moving storm may first appear already inside the 20-mile ring — you'd get the watch, or just the stop operations alert, with no advisory ahead of it.

If a storm is already underway the moment you register a site, we check the last hour of strike history — if lightning has already hit inside your radius, the site goes straight into alert with the correct remaining countdown.

The texts you'll receive

There are only a handful of message types, so anything from us is worth reading. Every one names the site the same way: by its site name if you've given it one, otherwise by its address. The status page and compliance report use the same name.

The watch, the alert, and the site-opening alert name what has to stop according to your site type — "outdoor operations" by default, "play and grounds operations" for a golf course, and so on.

Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts, or HELP for assistance. Message frequency depends entirely on the weather. Message and data rates may apply.

Site operating hours

By default, every site alerts 24 hours a day. If lightning hits within 10 miles at 3 AM, your contacts get a text at 3 AM.

For a site nobody occupies overnight, that's a phone buzzing for no reason. Operating hours let you set a working window — say 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM — and text alerts are held outside it.

What "held" actually means

This is the important part, and it's narrower than it sounds. Operating hours pause text messages only. Everything else runs continuously, exactly as it always has:

• Lightning detection never stops — we're still polling your coordinates every few minutes, all night.
• Your live status page stays accurate around the clock. At 3 AM it will show the alert, the countdown, and the strike map, same as at noon.
• Every strike and every warning is still recorded in full for your compliance report.

What happens to a warning that starts overnight

Two possibilities, and the difference matters:

• The storm is still active when your site opens. At exactly your start time, every contact gets the alert — worded to make clear the warning was already in progress, not that a strike just landed. The 30-minute countdown carries on from the last real strike, so if the final strike was at 6:50 and you open at 7:00, the all-clear arrives around 7:20.
• The storm ended before your site opened. Nobody gets anything. We don't send a "lightning alert" at 7 AM for a storm that finished at 3:30 AM — that would be a false alarm and would train people to ignore real ones. The overnight warning is still in your compliance report, marked as outside operating hours.
• Early advisories (20/15 miles) are never held. Outside your working hours they're simply skipped — an early warning is only useful in the moment, so a stale one is never queued for morning. If the storm is still approaching when your site opens, the next reading sends a fresh, current warning.

All-clears are never held

If your contacts were told to stop outdoor operations, they always get told when it's over — even if the storm drags past closing time and the all-clear lands at 9:30 PM. Leaving a site on hold overnight would be worse than one late text.

Setting it up

1. Open your dashboard and find the site. Each site card shows its current alert hours — new sites read 24/7 — always alert.
2. Click Change, then tick Only send text alerts during working hours.
3. Set your start and end time, tick the days people are on site, and confirm the time zone (we detect it from the site's location, but check it).
4. Click Save. The card now shows your window, and a Texts paused right now tag whenever you're outside it.

Hours are set per site, so a site with a night shift can stay on 24/7 while your other sites run 7 to 5. Overnight windows that cross midnight aren't supported yet — if a site operates 8 PM to 6 AM, leave it on 24/7 and email us; we'd like to know.

Your live status page

Every site has its own status page — the link is in your texts, your welcome email, and on each site card in your dashboard.

It shows the current status (all clear, or an active alert naming what has to stop in the same words as your texts), the live countdown during an alert, a map with your site, the 10-mile radius, recent strikes, and a live rain radar overlay, plus a list of recent strike activity with distances.

Managing your sites

Adding a site

1. Open your dashboard and click + Add a site.
2. In Site location, enter a street address, GPS coordinates, or a Google Maps link. For an address, you can pick it from the suggestions that appear.
3. Add a site name, the kind of site it is, and optionally a phone number for alerts.
4. Click Start monitoring. If you entered coordinates, a map link, or an address you didn't pick from the suggestions, we show the spot on a map first. Check it, click Yes, that's the spot, then Start monitoring again. Coverage begins immediately, and if lightning is already nearby you'll know right away.

Sites without a street address

Well sites, pads, leases and right-of-way work usually don't have a street address. You don't need one. Paste whatever you already have into the site location field:

• GPS coordinates in decimal, like 31.8457, -94.1234, or degrees-minutes-seconds, like 31°50'44.5"N 94°07'24.3"W.
• A Google Maps link, including a shared pin drop (maps.app.goo.gl/…) or a full link copied from the browser's address bar.

We read the point out of what you paste and show it on a small map with the question "Is this the right spot?" Check the marker is on the location, not on the road into it or a neighboring pad, and confirm. If it's wrong, click No, change it and paste a better pin. Every alert distance is measured from that point.

A site name is required for coordinates and map links. A pin drop doesn't come with an address, so the name is what your crew will see in every text, like "Smith Lease #4" or "Pad 7 — CR 2140." For a street address the name is optional. Without one, texts use the address.

Renaming a site

Click the pencil (✎) next to the site's name on your dashboard. The name is what every text, the status page and the compliance report use for the site. Names like "Fairmont Pkwy warehouse" make texts and reports easier to read than raw addresses. A name change applies to the next text sent. A site added from coordinates or a map link can be renamed, but its name can't be left blank.

Site type

Each site has a type: construction site; hotel, resort, or pool; golf course; marina or waterfront; facility or campus grounds; or general outdoor site. It sets one thing — the words your alerts use for what has to stop:

• Construction site, facility, or general: "outdoor operations"
• Hotel, resort, or pool: "outdoor amenity operations"
• Golf course: "play and grounds operations"
• Marina or waterfront: "dock and waterfront operations"

Detection, distances, timing, and who gets texted are the same for every type. To change it, click Change next to Site type on the site's card. The site card shows the exact wording, and the next alert uses it.

When you no longer need a site monitored

Click Stop monitoring on the site's card. That ends alerts for that site and frees the slot, so you can add another site without changing your plan. Your plan's site limit counts only actively monitored sites.

Alert contacts

Every contact on a site receives the same alert and all-clear texts at the same time. Add everyone who needs to know when outdoor operations stop — the person who makes the call and the people on site who carry it out.

To add one, click + Add contact on the site's card in your dashboard and enter their number and name. To remove one, click the ✕ next to their number. How many contacts each site can have depends on your plan — Starter and Pro both allow 5 per site, Business allows 10 per site.

Compliance reports

Every detected strike, alert, and all-clear is logged with a timestamp. Click Compliance report on any site card to generate a report for any date range — it shows when each alert went out, how many people were notified, when operations were cleared to resume, and the detection methodology.

Use the Download PDF button to save or print it. It's built for handing to an OSHA inspector, an insurer, or a client asking how your lightning procedure is enforced and documented.

A report shows what happened. A written plan shows what you intend to happen, and inspectors and clients generally want to see both. If you don't have one on file yet, our free jobsite lightning safety plan template is fill-in-the-blank, covers monitoring, stop-work, shelter and the 30-minute all-clear, and needs no account.

Billing & plans

Plans are priced per company, not per user or per text. All plans include the same monitoring, alerts, status pages, and compliance reports — they differ only in how many sites and contacts you can have.

Changing your plan

In your dashboard's Plan & billing section, click Change plan. You'll see your options with proration handled automatically — upgrades take effect immediately.

Payment details and invoices

Click Manage billing to update your card, view invoices, or cancel. Billing is handled by Stripe; we never see or store your card details.

Cancelling

Cancel anytime from Manage billing — no contracts, no cancellation fees. Monitoring continues through the end of your paid period.

Signing in

There are no passwords. Go to the sign-in page, enter your email, and we'll send you a sign-in link. The link works for 15 minutes and signs you in for 30 days on that device.

Use the same email you registered with. If the email doesn't arrive within a minute or two, check your spam folder, then use "Resend link."

Troubleshooting

Contact support

Email [email protected] — a real person reads and answers every message. Include your account email and, if it's about a specific site, the site name or address, and we can usually resolve things in one reply.