THE UK Meteorological Office - or The Met Office as it is now known in these days of marketing awareness - has just launched a new online service providing county-by-county forecasts of lightning risk as well as reports of actual lightning strikes.

Called MIST, the service provides a map of the British Isles colour coded by risk of lightning strike and the software will run on any PC with a modem link to the Met Office telecommunications centre at Bracknell.