Blitzortung.org Forum

I occasionally see lightning strikes in the Oceania region that only have 3 participants, and 2 of the participants are from Hawaii and Bangkok (myself), with a third participant from somewhere in Australia/NZ. At first I just discounted these as random associations, since if a strike had occurred in the region shown, then surely many other stations in Australia would have participated. But I've seen this happen a number of times, so has got me thinking. Is this a detection from the opposite side of the earth?

If only three stations participate, then I believe there are 2 possible location solutions. One solution is in between the 3 stations, and the other solution is on the opposite side of the earth. If 4 or more stations participate, then there should only be one location solution.

See attached for a recent example. This "apparent strike" has occurred quite close to the station in Australia, so the alternate solution wouldn't be exactly on the opposite of the earth but a bit to the south of that opposite point... which I can guess to be around the equator somewhere off the West coast of Africa. Checking out the WWLLN maps, there is indeed lightning activity in that area, at the time of the strike.

Is this alternate strike location a feasible explanation?

We allow three stations for New Zealand (longitude > 160°), but such a low limit also produces more false positives. But of course we want to improve that by closer analysis of the signals and other parameters.