Zero. Ziltch. Nada. Hoping things will improve for the stormy seasons.
Not only is the newer weather system battling METARS to produce weather, it also ALWAYS struggled with the smaller “isolated” thunderstorms. I think this CAN be resolved.
Using real time lightning data, the MSFS Weather engine COULD safely and effectively “build” a Thunderstorm cell around real time lightning data since a lightning strike is a guarantee of towering cumulus and or a maturing or mature storm. Not sure if Asobo has access to the real time lightning data but this is a 100% guarantee of cumulonimbus and a storm cell around it.
Here is a post I made a while back about it:
Weather is for sure a tricky thing to simulate, almost like simulating WATER. But it can be done. MS HAD a really good representation of the live weather up until like SU5 (then WORSENED even more after the METAR implementation), but unfortunately we lost that for now (Asobo is THINKING about restoring LIVE weather WITHOUT METAR according to latest Wishlist! Halleluiah!!!).
Simulating weather needs all kinds of “CLUES” and DATA to simulate it right. So data says there are clouds in the area? Ok now what KIND of clouds? Right now it seems the weather engine just puts CUMULUS type in all the time, instead of using other data to DETERMINE the cloud types. Is it cooler, no humidity? Then we need to use STRATUS or a thinner layer of clouds. Is the temperature high and humidity high? Then the system needs to lean more to cumulus and towering cumulus depending on other conditions. Temperature high and humidity very low? Likely won’t be clouds but if there are they would also likely NOT be cumulus clouds. Then for cloud heights, it appears that Meteoblue has data on their maps that shows low, medium and high clouds.
The CAPE AND LIFTED INDEX could be used in conjunction with the cloud and lightning data to also determine if cumulus or towering cumulus are present: Weather Maps | Live Satellite & Weather Radar - meteoblue I think they USED to do this in previous weather engine version to determine where lightning would be present, but that effect was too strong. It is DEFINITELY a good indicator to use for cumulus and cumulonimbus cloud types though! So this, in conjunction with live lightning data could determine where the thunderstorm cells are.
I think Asobo needs to hire metrological experts, like they hired many other folks to tackle other things they could not handle in house. I would PAY EXTRA for “premium” weather module (WITHOUT the stinking METAR!)
Also, clouds are OPAQUE not TRANSPARENT! They look pretty good further away but as soon as we get close to the clouds or “inside” of them, it’s just a see-through transparent blob of light fog and the SENSE OF MOTION through the cloud is gone since like SU5 timeframe.
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Thank you, for this magnificent explanation and possible solution.
Hopefully they will listen to you and start trying resolve this problem a reality with lightning and thunder in real time.
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MODERATOR EDIT:
This post merged into this topic.
I live in the Tampa bay area of Florida. The lightning capital of the
US. Will lightning and thunder ever return to Flight simulator real time weather ???
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If I’m flying at night, with the lights off in my room, I might not necessarily want to see a lot of lightning flashes. That’s why I suggest an option to toggle the flashes off, and just have thunder instead.
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I sure hope not…not to the extent that is was. No lightning is better than too much lightning, IMHO.
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I have seen them only where they was stated on METAR. But they are rare.
This is when i tested before christmas after su7 were released.
Have not tested since then.
Wow.. who knew that Lightning or no lightning was such a polarizing issue.
What if they turned off the wind in SU10? I think some people here would actually welcome that… “Stupid wind, always blowing my plane off course ..glad they finally got rid of it” 
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They already did remove varied wind speed when they removed gusts over runway to make landings easy.
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I’m not so sure they removed gusting wind to make landings easy. Possibly more that gusts weren’t working right in some way. I thought you could manually implement gusting wind anyway?
I need to re-check that, as its been ages since I looked at it.
So I configured manual weather, an found that the gusts seem to be locked to double whatever the wind is. So if I set the wind to 2kts, it can’t gust any more than 4kts. 5kts for 10kts, and so on.
And if you watch the both the windsock, and “Debug aircraft speed” window in dev. mode you will see it do just that.
Perhaps I am just mis-remembering this, but I thought they had fixed the crosswind issue.
I set up a non-gusting 10kts crosswind, set up on RWY27 with the wind coming from the North. No crosswind reported:
It wasn’t until I got to 46kts on takeoff that the crosswind came in to full strength. When my ground speed was 24kts, I had a 5kt crosswind.
I’m sure they fixed that. 
I misremembered this. The thing they fixed was wind at ground level not being halved, not crosswind while stationary.
To make it easy or not. Why remove it? Why not improve it then?
They have had problems with autopilot not working propperly since release. Should they remove the autopilot feature then as an example? Many not perfect working features in the sim. It’s not a fix to remove them. Autopilot we have option to turn off or on. Maybe add options to choose what we like to use for those features they decide to remove because they not working propperly. Removing features will only makes angry users that bought those features they suddenly remove. Next time it may be a feature someone else likes. And with that mindset we will have many features missing after 10 years of developement.
But I just demonstrated they didn’t remove it. I didn’t bounce around the world to test different locations for live weather, but I could see that even in that one location the wind had variation to it. It was not consistent. And gusting wind with custom weather works as well, as you can see in my images.
“To make it easy or not. Why remove it? Why not improve it then?”
I agree with you 100%
I like thunders and lightnings . If I have a choice I would rather prefer too many instead of nothing.
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The specific claim above was that they had removed gusts, and I believe they didn’t. At least as far as what I can see in the dev. mode speed debug windows.
I haven’t seen lightning in ages though, but then I haven’t actively sought it out.
I have tested many times. There is only constant winds at ground level in live-weather. Test it while you standing still on runway. The winds will blow at the rate METAR says and it will stay constant at that rate.
But no need to talk about that here. I just wanted to mention that because @KingAirB200 said they soon maybe remove wind when they already has removed a big part of wind (gusts).
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I havent seen lightning the last 5 months even if Im flying through thunderstorms😩. I always use live weather.
I miss lightning so much 
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That is funny because I was using the weather app on my phone my lightning tracker to find storms right now there should be big storms over Florida, Kentucky, Near the Colorado Kansas border the Texas Panhandle and Wisconsin
Turbulence in Storms was removed early on followed by lightning and a batch of different cloud types.
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Yes, when look back to earlier videos of mine I find cloud variation was so much better back then.
Frankly it looks a bit rubbish now compared to what it was like soon after release. Fortunately video evidence like that can’t really be refuted.
The only way to get this addressed directly is for a dev. Q&A question to get enough votes to make it in, so they have to confront it. The question has to be carefully worded so we get the answer we want, not necessarily what they want to offer.
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