Weather conditions impact our entire community and portions of our day-to-day activities. Occasionally, weather may be severe and present risks to the safety of our community. The Office of Emergency Management (OEM) monitors severe weather and provides times-sensitive updates to key University administrators.
Conditions at Binghamton University
Want to know what the weather is like on the Binghamton University campus? Click here to view data from the University's official weather station.
Lightning Alerting System
Binghamton University utilizes three emergency notification stations on campus athletic fields to notify everyone in the area when lightning is nearby. These stations are located at the Bearcats Sports Complex, the baseball stadium and the Campus Recreation turf field. If lightning is detected withing a 8-mile radius of campus, each of the notification stations will activate a horn and strobe. The strobe will remain active until 30 minutes have passed since the last strike of lightning in the 8-mile radius. The 30-minute countdown timer can be viewed here.
How it works
When lightning is in the area, it's important to take shelter in a safe, weather-proof indoor location:
- enclosed building
- away from windows
- in your enclosed car or truck if you can't find shelter
Stay away from:
- water
- trees
- metal fences
- golf carts
- mowers
- elevated ground
- power lines
The Total Lightning Network monitors the skies for both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes (aka "total lightning"). When lightning is detected, this global network of lightning sensors automatically issues severe weather alerts to impacted areas.
Note: This system has "silence times" enabled during nighttime or other hours when the facilities are closed. During these time frames, the lightning siren will not activate when lightning is detected.
Sferic Maps
Key campus personnel have access to EarthNetworks Sferic Maps real-time weather software. If you have been provided a username and password to this service, you may log in here.
New users may view a brief tutorial on setting up the Sferic Maps software here.
