I’ve noticed that there has been an increase in thunderstorm activity, but it seems a couple things are happening…
1 - the cloud formation is poor in some of the storms, I’ve seen lightning shoot out from a very small, puffy cloud that no way should produce a lightning strike
2 - there seems to be a ‘zone’ around the storm, and once you fly out of it, the storm stops triggering. I noticed this when I flew over where a storm was happening in Spain, and as soon as you were roughly 5 miles away the lightning stopped. Checked on lightning map and it was still happening.
However, at least it appears to be being worked on, although I will say that not every storm is being reproduced in game.
2 Likes
Yes they definitely are…which is great. They just need to fix it so it looks realistic.
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I haven’t seen thunder in lightening in over a year at least.
Is there a setting somewhere where I need to look?
1 Like
If you are on live weather, you just need to be where lightning is predicted, then hope for the best.
I’ve seen it twice all year, I think, but I haven’t been storm chasing.
Hi,
Normally I fly mostly in the Alps in Central Europe. There I didn’t encounter any lightning, even in thunderstorms.
However yesterday flew from Oklahoma to North Texas and there was lots of lightning despite only a few, light clouds . Go figure.
That tallies pretty much with my RL experience here in Nuremberg … but one thing’s for certain, there will be plenty more before winter returns.
There is not possible to observe distanced storm. You need to enter the storm area and then you can expect some flashes around. When you leave area that game recognize as an active storm - the lightnings disappear.
2 Likes
Honestly, its potluck. A TS was happening over Baton Rouge yestersay, and it was a major one but nothing triggered.
Yet the storm in Spain i saw did, and that was a relatively small storm. It’s really luck of the draw i think
5 Likes
I had a Raging Thunderstorm with Lightning over Winnipeg (CYWG) as I was going through my checklist today…
With hardly a cloud in the sky!
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I’ve seen it mentioned the weather is rendered in tiles, think of it like a tile floor. Here and there a tile is marked as TS,as you fly over the TS tile you will get lightning, once you fly past it the lightning stops.
To date I’ve seen 1 TS occurring in Florida, I fly mostly on the east coast and flew over many cold fronts in the spring/winter that had real life active lines of TS’s but none of it was rendered in the game.
I’ve spawned at airports which had heavy precipitation due to TS’s purposefully to see how it was depicted in game and saw only rain.
Heck I’ve spawned at airports which even show the lightning indicator on World Map current weather and still got only rain.
In FS2004 I used to just put a building storms theme with a rate of change and random pop-up thunderstorms would develope and die out randomly and cloud heights would raise and fall (thousands of feet high).
Would love to see that randomness be included but this is a different weather engine and not capable of dynamic offline themes….themes are static.
2 Likes
I saw a ton of it in Texas yesterday.
Clouds rarely climb above 15000 feet, its a little bizarre. Also, when you see the clouds building assumably due to the moving air simulation, there is relatively no turbulence. It just feels wrong!
4 Likes
It will be a good test to fly out of southern England Heathrow, Gatwick the weekend we have thunderstorm Warnings from Saturday to end of Sunday been flawless weather the last 3weeks 
good energy build up about to give way
Me neither. The last time I saw lightning in Live Weather was literally in July 2022, and it wasn’t even good. Also, I almost always fly in Live Weather and often in areas that are prone to thunderstorms (Florida, South-East Asia etc.).
Here is what I wrote back then:
1 Like
I’m seeing plenty of it in SE Asia on a flight from WMKK to RPLL over my left wing. Exactly where it should be.
Massive storms in Austin, Texas right now. The METAR shows: KAUS 220053Z 28012G34KT 1 1/2SM +TSRA BR SCT030 BKN049CB BKN055 24/22 A2984 RMK AO2 PK WND 32038/0039 LTG DSNT ALQDS RAB37 TSB15 SLP093 FROPA FRQ LTGICCCCG OHD TS OHD MOV SE P0012 T02390217
Lots of lightning reported.
Here’s using LW:
Sitting for 5 minutes and nothing.
Using another weather option (Xenviro) and instant flashes and thunder sounds, you can see the bolt there. Hard to capture.
5 Likes
Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?
No.
Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?
Yes
Brief description of the issue:
No thunder and lightning even where it’s shown as the current conditions in the world map.
Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:
I won’t send a screenshot of “no lightning happening” it would be silly me thinks.
Provide coordinates (DevMode > Options > Display position)
Worldwide
Provide time & date of the observed Weather issue:
Since SU7
Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:
I used to chase storms in MSFS. There are none where they should be.
PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:
NA
Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:
SU7
yesterday i spent hours to fly into thunderstorms over germany … no thunder, no lighting… just nothing.
Before the aggressive METAR blending was introduced, thunderstorms appeared reliably in the areas where Meteoblue data indicated them. It is impossible to consistently, in space and in time, represent a thunderstorm where 2 sources disagree. Disagreement is unavoidable because METAR is like a still image, compared with a movie. They only agree at a single time instance.
Therefore, METAR is literally a bug, introduced into the MSFS weather simulation.
8 Likes
I’d change introduced to voted in by the community. 
