For the manager on shift when the sky turns

You're watching the front desk.
We'll watch the sky.

A text to the manager on shift, the pool staff and the bar when lightning is detected within 20 miles of your hotel, 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 for that address. The deck reopens after 30 strike-free minutes.

Set up in under 2 minutes · No app for anyone to install · Cancel anytime

Real-time strike data from Xweather's national lightning detection network
Automatic 30-minute all-clear timer — every new strike restarts it
SMS delivery through Twilio, the same infrastructure used for bank alerts
Payments handled by Stripe — card details never touch our servers
The ladder

Four messages, in the order a storm arrives

Each stage sends once per storm. No repeats, no chatter. Every text the manager on shift 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 close the deck.

20 mi
Advisory

Lightning is in the area, with distance and direction. Nothing closes. The manager on shift knows it's out there.

15 mi
Watch

It's closing. Stop seating the rooftop, warn the banquet captain, and have pool staff ready to clear the deck.

10 mi
Stop operations

All outdoor amenity operations must stop. Staff clear the pool deck, the rooftop and the cabanas, and service moves in.

30 min
All clear

Thirty strike-free minutes, then the deck reopens. Every new strike restarts the clock — a rule, not someone's patience.

A text reaches your staff. Your staff reach the guests. Lightning Ward doesn't clear a pool deck by itself — nobody on a lounge chair is on the contact list. What it does is give the pool attendant, the bar and the manager on shift the same message at the same second, so the people guests actually listen to know it's time.

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.

How it works

From hotel address to active monitoring in two minutes

No weather station on the roof, no app for your staff to download. If a pool attendant can get a text, the pool attendant's covered.

1

Register the hotel address

Enter the address and the numbers that get alerts — the manager on shift, the pool and beach attendants, the rooftop bar, whoever is running events, and the grounds crew lead. A pool, a rooftop and a beach on one property sit a short walk apart, which is small against a 10-mile ring, so one address covers them all. We watch the airspace around it around the clock, out to 20 miles.

2

Get warned before it's on top of you

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 your outdoor amenities' closing time if you've set operating hours. One text per stage, per storm. Nobody's phone buzzes for nothing.

3

Stop at 10, all-clear at 30

A strike inside 10 miles sends the stop operations alert, and staff clear the deck. Then, after 30 consecutive strike-free minutes, every contact gets the all-clear at the same moment, so the pool reopens on one call — not on whichever guest asked the loudest.

What you get

Everything a lightning procedure needs, nothing it doesn't

Built for the GM, the director of operations and the front desk manager who will be on shift when the sky turns — not another dashboard to babysit.

📡

Staged 20 / 15 / 10-mile alerts

Three tiers instead of one, around your hotel's coordinates — not a county-wide alert for the whole metro. The early tiers are the part nobody at the front desk can do: you can hear thunder at ten miles, not see a cell at twenty.

🌧️

The forecast in the same text

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 your outdoor amenities are due to close. The near view and the longer one in a single message, so nobody opens a weather app to decide whether to close the pool. We relay the Weather Service; we don't forecast anything ourselves.

🏊

Written for a deck that can't clear instantly

A full pool, a rooftop bar with open tabs, a wedding on the terrace at five — none of that is indoors the second a text lands. That's why the ladder starts at 20 miles instead of 10: the advisory and the watch buy back the minutes it takes to move guests and service inside.

⏱️

30-minute all-clear timer

Every new strike resets the clock. The all-clear only goes out after a full 30 strike-free minutes, so the deck reopens on a rule — not on how long guests have been asking.

🗺️

A status page for shift change

Each site gets a shareable status page with a live strike map, radar overlay, countdown, and the next twelve hours from the National Weather Service. At handoff, the incoming manager opens the link and sees where the countdown stands — no briefing, no login.

👥

Front desk, pool and bar, same text, same second

Add every number that needs to know when outdoor amenity operations stop — the front desk, the pool and beach attendants, the rooftop bar, events, the grounds crew. Every contact gets every stage at the same time. No radio relay, nobody hearing it first from a guest.

📱

Works on any phone

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.

📄

A record of every closure

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 owners, or a guest asking why the pool closed at 2:40.

Pricing

Simple per-company pricing

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.

Starter
One active site, up to three alert contacts.
$29
per month
  • 1 monitored site
  • 3 alert contacts
  • Staged 20/15/10-mile alerts & 30-min all-clear
  • National Weather Service forecast in every warning
  • Live status page with strike map
Choose Starter
Business
For GCs and firms with a full project portfolio.
$199
per month
  • Up to 25 monitored sites
  • 10 alert contacts per site
  • Staged 20/15/10-mile alerts & 30-min all-clear
  • National Weather Service forecast in every warning
  • Live status page per site
Choose Business

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.

FAQ

Common questions

Something else on your mind? Email us — a real person answers.

Does Lightning Ward clear the pool for us?
No. A text reaches your staff; your staff reach the guests. Guests aren't on the contact list, and a text to the front desk doesn't get anyone out of the water. What Lightning Ward does is make sure the pool attendant, the bar, events and the manager on shift all get the same message at the same second, with a distance they can repeat — and it keeps a timestamped record of when the deck closed and when it reopened.
What do staff tell a guest who doesn't want to get out?
How your hotel handles that is your call — we won't write your guest policy for you. What the text gives your staff is something specific to say instead of "it looks bad out there": lightning has been detected within 10 miles, and the deck reopens 30 minutes after the last strike. The status page link shows the live countdown, so an attendant can show a guest exactly where it stands rather than argue about the sky.
We have a pool, a rooftop and a beach. Is that one site or several?
One. We monitor from your hotel's address, and amenities on the same property sit a short walk apart, which is small against a 10-mile ring. One site covers the pool, the rooftop, the beach and the grounds, and every contact on it gets every stage. A second hotel at a different address is a second site.
Why 10 miles and 30 minutes?
Those are the thresholds recommended in OSHA/NOAA lightning safety guidance for outdoor workers (OSHA publication 3863): suspend work when lightning is within 10 miles, and wait 30 minutes after the last strike before resuming. Your pool attendants, outdoor servers, and grounds and landscaping crew are outdoor workers, and that guidance is written for them. For guests, Lightning Ward uses the same 10-mile and 30-minute thresholds; how your hotel applies them to guests is your decision. We start texting at 20 miles because by the time lightning is at 10, a full deck and a busy rooftop still take time to clear.
Does every storm give advance warning?
No, and we won't pretend otherwise. Storms that move in from a distance cross the 20- and 15-mile rings first, so you get the advisory and the watch before the stop operations alert. But a cell that builds directly over a site can put lightning inside 10 miles with nothing detected further out — in that case the stop operations alert is the first message you receive. Detection also reaches about 25 miles out, so a fast-moving storm may first appear already inside the 20-mile ring. We report what's detected, and we relay what the National Weather Service has published for your address — we don't make forecasts of our own.
Is this a different service from what other customers get?
No. Every Lightning Ward customer gets the same detection, the same 20-, 15- and 10-mile rings, the same 30-minute all-clear, the same contact limits and the same prices. Choosing "Hotel, resort, or pool" at signup changes one thing: the words your texts use for what has to stop. Yours say "outdoor amenity operations."

The next storm is already forming.

Let something watch the sky while your team runs the hotel — it takes about two minutes to set up.

Start monitoring your hotel →