Abstract: A system and method for presenting lightning strike information in a manner so as to be easily understood and appreciated by viewers of televised weather report presentations and the like. Lightning strike information is displayed with a marker and textual indication of the lightning strike location in a viewer friendly format, e.g., a street address. Lightning strike data from a lightning strike data source is filtered to select individual lightning strikes to be displayed and processed to obtain the viewer friendly lightning strike location information to be presented overlaid on a geographic map or satellite image background. Personalized lighting strike information indicating the distance of a lighting strike from a viewer location of interest may be generated and provided directly to individual viewers via the interne, cellular phones, and/or other wired or wireless communication channels.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method for generating a weather index mapped to a road segment for a particular time frame includes receiving weather condition information for a plurality of time periods, parsing the weather condition information to determine weather conditions for a road segment defined by a starting point and an ending point for the plurality of time periods, and generating a plurality of weather indices for the road segment. Each weather index is associated with one of the plurality of time periods and is representative of a predicted traffic impact based on historical information of the received weather conditions for the road segment. The plurality of time periods includes at least one future time period and the weather condition information includes forecasted weather information.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method of defining and presenting a presentation including a plurality of scenes and a presenter appearing in the scenes. The method includes defining a first scene including a geographic background, receiving geographic location information and remote video and/or data information from a remote site, and defining within the first scene a launch area within the geographic background corresponding to the geographic location information. The method further includes associating a destination scene with the defined launch area. The method yet further includes displaying the destination scene in place of the first scene when the presenter provides a scene change signal with the pointing element located at the defined launch area in the first scene, wherein the destination scene displayed is a background scene generated based on remote video and/or data information received from the remote site.