OLNEY, Ill., Oct. 23, 2026 – Aerostratospheric, based in Olney, Illinois, now publishes nearby lightning observations from its fixed ground weather station in Casey, Illinois. The Aerostratospheric lightning detector counts nearby strikes and reports how far away the most recent one was. Its readings appear on xDataHub, the organization's open data board, at https://www.midwestsds.com/msds-data-hub.html.

The detector sits with the Casey weather station and the Aerostratospheric radiation index, so storm activity can be read next to temperature and dose rate. The lightning card shows the distance of the last strike, the number of strikes so far today and the closest strike of the day. The count restarts at local midnight, and the card refreshes about every five minutes. Aerostratospheric notes on the card that distances are the detector's estimate and can be off.

The same page links to the raw lightning feed, a strike log, a lightning dataset on Hugging Face and the lightning layer in UOGW (Unified Open Global Weather), so researchers, educators and local weather groups can use the data directly. Lightning data is credited to Aerostratospheric and released under CC BY 4.0.

The lightning detector uses Ecowitt equipment, an Ecowitt WH57 lightning detector paired with an Ecowitt GW1200 gateway. Aerostratospheric first described the lightning addition on Sept. 24, 2026 as a planned sensor for the Casey site. Lightning awareness adds day-of context for the team's go/no-go weather decisions at its Casey launch site.

The Casey station reports to Weather Underground as KILCASEY47 and shares observations through the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) under callsign KE9CFY. The same Casey site is NASA GLOBE site 422147. xDataHub carries the station's weather, radiation, lightning and gateway-pressure streams on one board, with recent trends, daily highs and lows, and links to the raw data. A lux meter, a light-level sensor, is the next Casey sensor listed as coming soon.

Researchers, educators and local weather groups interested in the Casey data can reach Aerostratospheric at [email protected] or book a 15-minute call at https://calendly.com/aerostratospheric/15min.

About Aerostratospheric
Olney, Illinois-based Aerostratospheric designs, builds, and flies lightweight high-altitude payload science platforms and publishes open atmospheric data for research, education, and public use. Science flights are conducted under FAA Part 101. Corporate office: 801 S. West Street, Suite 101, Olney, IL 62450. Launch operations and the ground weather station: Casey, Illinois. Web: https://www.aerostratospheric.com/

Media contact
Elena Vargas, Press & Communications Lead, Launch Control
Aerostratospheric
[email protected]
Corporate Office: 801 S. West Street, Suite 101, Olney, IL 62450

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