The technology

Every alert is a decision.
Here is the whole machine.

Most alert services ask you to trust a black box. We publish our decision rules instead — the data we read, the ring we draw, the clock we run, and the two words we will never send. If a rule on this page ever changes, the page changes with it.

20 kmthe lightning ring around your site — twice the width of the textbook safety radius

30 minof zero activity before we say all-clear — the internationally used waiting period

3message types, ever: amber, red, all-clear. Nothing else is sent

01 — The signal

Lightning only. By design.

SkyCall reads two professional feeds for every site: licensed lightning detection data — the commercial-grade strike networks, not crowd apps — and weather radar, the same returns forecasters read.

Lightning only. We will never text you about rain, wind or a cloudy afternoon — just the one thing on your site that kills. Everything else belongs in a weather app; your people's attention is too valuable to spend on drizzle.

02 — The ring and the clock

20 kilometres. 30 minutes. Not negotiable.

International lightning-safety practice works on a simple pair: know when strikes are near, and wait a full 30 minutes of quiet before resuming. SkyCall builds both in. The red ring is 20 km — roughly double the distance at which a storm can already reach you with its next strike, because lightning does not respect the edge of the rain. The all-clear clock is 30 clean minutes, and it restarts from zero on every new strike inside the ring. The clock cannot be hurried, by us or by you.

03 — The amber method

We watch the storm before it watches you.

Amber comes from radar trajectory. The engine compares successive radar frames, finds each storm cell, and measures its movement — bearing and speed. A cell tracking toward your site with storm-strength returns earns an amber: heads up, it's coming. A cell drifting past, however dramatic it looks out the window, earns silence.

Amber fires once per approachthen locks out for 90 minutes — a line of embedded cells behind the first one doesn't re-ring every phone on site.

04 — The alert cycle

The rules that stop spam — without ever going quiet mid-storm.

This is the state machine every site runs. It exists to solve the two failure modes that make crews ignore alert systems: too many messages, and the silent abandonment mid-storm.

Red fires on lightning activity inside the ring — and holds. Through an embedded storm with strike after strike, you get one red, not forty. The storm is one event; you were already told.

Red never repeats until an all-clear has been given — so a red on your phone always means new danger, never an echo of the danger you already know about.

All-clear fires after 30 clean minutes — and once a red has been sent, the system is not permitted to stop watching until the all-clear goes out. No site is ever left hanging mid-storm.

New activity after an all-clear → new red, immediately — the returning storm doesn't need to earn a fresh amber first. The cycle starts again.

05 — The record

Decided, sent, timestamped, kept.

Every decision the engine makes — fire or hold, and why — is written to the log the moment it happens, alongside every message sent. The result is a simple way to show what your people were told, and when. Consent is part of the same record: no number receives anything before its own YES, every message carries STOP, and your numbers, site details and alert log are stored in Australia — no sale, no sharing, no lists.

06 — The two words we never send

"It's safe."

SkyCall is an Australian information service that supports your site's hazardous weather policy.