ualf 0.1.1

Parser and client utilities for the Universal ASCII Lightning Format (UALF)

ualf

Parser and client utilities for the Universal ASCII Lightning Format (UALF), including:

• parse_ualf_line and parse_ualf to convert UALF text into structured Lightning events
• fetch_lightning_events helper to call the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) Frost API lightning endpoint and parse into events
• Optional DataFrame support via to_dataframe (install with pip install ualf[pandas])

Install

pip install ualf

Or for DataFrame support:

pip install "ualf[pandas]"

Usage (Parser)

from ualf import parse_ualf_line

line = "0 2025 08 15 12 54 11 233363712 64.2117 10.5121 25 0 18 33 117.17 0.23 0.11 0.97 16.8 14.6 2.8 0 1 0 1"
event = parse_ualf_line(line)
print(event.timestamp, event.lat, event.lon)

Usage (Client)

Set credentials for Frost API (Basic auth) and fetch recent strikes:

# .env
FROST_CLIENT_ID=your-id

from ualf import fetch_lightning_events, to_dataframe

lat_lon = (60.0000, 10.0000)
events = fetch_lightning_events(lat_lon, size=1.0, max_age="P1D")
print(len(events))

# Optional pandas
df = to_dataframe(events)

CLI

ualf-cli --lat 60.0000 --lon 10.0000 --size 1 --max-age P1D --format json --client-id your-id

Unit Tests

• Run unit tests:

python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "test_*py" -v

Development

python -m pip install -e .[dev,pandas]
ruff check . && mypy ualf
python -m unittest -v

See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.

License

MIT

Credits

Data from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute API usage