The Differences Between Radio Based Detection Systems and Optical Imaging Sensors

There are three or four satellites in orbit around the earth which have what we call lightning image sensors. When a lightning strike occurs there's a flash and that's counted. The lightning strikes that tend to happen within the cloud you know they can be seen by the optical imager however the ones that cause most damage are the ones that hit the ground. For the TV weather report it's going to be as you mentioned those strikes thathit the ground rather than the ones that happen up in the clouds.