Lightning causes a delay during the Eagles vs Cowboys football game
Plot of LightningCast Probability and GLM Flash Extent Density at/near Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia [click to enlarge]
Lightning caused a 1-hour delay in the Eagles vs Cowboys football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia (NFL.com) during the evening hours on 04 September 2025 (as a pre-frontal squall line was approaching the area) — the delay lasted from 10:25 pm ET (0225 UTC on 05 September) to 11:30 pm ET (0330 UTC on 05 September). A plot of GOES-19 LightningCast Probability and GOES-19 (GOES-East) GLM Flash Extent Density (above) displayed the increase in LightningCast Probability and Flash Extent Density around the time of the game delay.
An animation of 5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 Infrared images with an overlay of Flash Extent Density and contours of LightningCast Probability (below) showed the thunderstorms with satellite-detected lightning activity as they approached Philadelphia and Lincoln Financial Field (the cyan dot just south of Philadelphia).
5-minute GOES-19 Infrared, GLM Flash Extent Density and contours of LightningCast Probability [click to play MP4 animation]
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 Infrared images with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, parallax-corrected GLM Flash Points and parallax-corrected contours of LightningCast Probability (below) provided a closer view at higher temporal resolution. Lincoln Financial Field is located about 5 miles northeast of Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL).
1-minute GOES-19 Infrared images with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, GLM Flash Points and contours of LightningCast Probability, from 0030-0330 UTC on 05 September [click to play MP4 animation]
There was satellite-detected lightning activity just west of the stadium at 0234 UTC, about 10 minutes after the game was initially delayed (below), and very near the stadium at 0240 UTC — close to the time that the Twitter photo of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike was taken (see the bottom of this blog post).
GOES-19 Infrared image with overlays of GLM Flash Extent Density, GLM Flash Points and contours of LightningCast Probability, at 0234 UTC on 05 September [click to enlarge]