Despite early inclement weather at Augusta National last week prior to The Masters, the overall forecast for the season’s first Major was relatively fair. However, if there had been lightning and further signs of bad weather, the golf tournament would have been aided by Thor Guard, a lightning prediction system that has been in operation since 1973 and provides advanced warning of lightning potential and bad conditions.
The relationship with The Masters has been an ongoing partnership since the mid-1990s, according to Thor Guard President and Chief Executive Officer Bob Dugan. On-site, though, Thor Guard no longer has any employees on-site working with tournament officials around the implementation of the sensor technology, which predicts whether there is enough surrounding energy to create a strike.
“We don’t need a lightning strike to provide a warning,” Dugan explained, adding that Thor Guard is the world’s only lightning prediction system. “We analyze the electrostatic field, the area that actually creates lightning. We monitor it and let people know when lightning is coming, whether there’s a line of storms coming or not, all energy-related.”
The industry veteran further elaborated that the technology, which can span from read-only systems to standalone horns and more advanced systems that combine various Thor Guard features, is now designed so that a person with zero technology and weather-forecasting background could oversee a simplified system like the company’s L75 model.
Thor Guard can provide a warning to tournament officials, spectators and officials an hour from a lightning strike, with the expectation that play will eventually be suspended. According to Dugan, that specific warning is about “95 percent accurate” that the golf course will be hit with lightning.
Dugan added that, “There’s so many jokes about how bad meteorologists are. Our guys can’t be bad.”
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While a warning system which just lights up red and green is something Thor Guard provides to customers, Dugan said that some people want to know more, especially pertaining to larger-scale sporting events like The Masters or NFL games.
“There’s so much data we provide so for those people who are more esoteric in nature and want to know more, plan better,” he said. “The green and red are fine if you want to step back and let the horn blow. If you’re doing a large event like the NFL or a tennis tournament, we’re using every piece of data coming in to help us make an informed decision. You have 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 people out on a golf course and some people take more time than others to help get them in.”
Thor Guard has been partners with the United States Golf Association since 1995 while other sports-specific partners have included the PGA TOUR, PGA of America, nearly a dozen NFL teams and the University of Michigan, among others.
