Architecture Overview · Park Whisperer Platform

Satellite Lightning → Park Ride Risk Intelligence

Ingests GOES-18 satellite lightning data at 20-second cadence, filters to a 20-mile park radius, and fuses GLM flash rate with NWS alerts and METAR observations into a 5-state storm machine that drives ride closure decisions.

GOES-18 Satellite DataBigQuery · 5-State Machine20-Mile Safety Radius

Click any component to explore it in the full case study.

Input A
GOES-18 GLM Files
Level 2 Lightning Cluster-Flash Algorithm (LCFA) NetCDF files. ~20 second cadence. Optical 777.4 nm wavelength. Flash-level merged discharge events covering the full CONUS — ~95% filtered by bounding box.
GOES-18 · 20-sec cadence
Input B
NWS Weather Alerts
api.weather.gov polygon-based area coverage for Orange + Osceola counties. Tornado watches, severe thunderstorm warnings, and SPC outlooks fused into storm state machine.
NWS API · County polygons
Input C
METAR Observations
KISM station (Walt Disney World) hourly weather: wind, visibility, sky conditions, present weather codes. Provides ground-truth surface confirmation for storm state transitions.
KISM · Hourly METAR
2-Stage Spatial Filter + Storm State Machine
Stage 1
Bounding Box + Haversine
28.21–28.56°N / -81.74 to -81.40°W eliminates 95% of CONUS data. Haversine distance to 4 park centers (MK, EPCOT, HS, AK). nearest_park assigned at ingest — no runtime geo math.
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Stage 2
BigQuery Ingest
tbl_lightning_whisperer: strike_id, timestamp, lat/lon, energy_Joules, nearest_park, distance_miles. 20-mile radius filter. Flash rate aggregated per 15-min window.
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Stage 3
Storm State Machine
5 states: CLEAR → WATCH → APPROACH → ACTIVE → SEVERE. Fuses GLM flash rate, METAR present-wx, NWS alerts, SPC outlooks, and 24hr forecast probability.
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Safety-Calibrated Thresholds
20-mile radius calibrated to ~80-min lead time for 10–20 mph storm motion. 10-mile ACTIVE threshold aligned with industry park lightning safety protocols. GLM Flash (not Event) level used for merged discharges — higher accuracy, lower false positive rate.
20-mile proximity radius~80-min lead time10-mile ACTIVE thresholdGLM Flash level (not Event)~8–12 km spatial accuracy5-state machine
Output A
Per-Park Storm State
CLEAR / WATCH / APPROACH / ACTIVE / SEVERE per park. Consumed by park operations ride closure logic, content pipelines (weather alerts), and operations dashboard.
Per-park · 4 parks
Output B
BigQuery Lightning Table
tbl_lightning_whisperer: queried for live flash rate aggregation every 15 minutes. Historical storm event analysis and pattern mining for model training.
BigQuery · 15-min cadence
20s
GLM file cadence
20mi
Park proximity filter
5
Storm states
4
Parks tracked
StackGOES-18 GLM LCFABigQueryNWS APIMETAR (KISM)Haversine distancePythonNetCDF parsingGCP