How many lightning strikes hit Colorado yesterday?

22 lightning flashes were detected across Colorado on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 4 PM MDT with 8 flashes in a single hour — a quieter-than-normal day for this state.

22
flashes on Tue, Sep 29
8
in the peak hour (4 PM MDT)
9,663
median day, last 30 days

Counts come from the NOAA GOES East/West Geostationary Lightning Mappers, which detect optical flashes from orbit. They include in-cloud lightning and are not a confirmed cloud-to-ground strike tally. A day here is a local calendar day in America/Denver, and totals are aggregated over the Colorado bounding box, so cells near a border can fall either side. No detections in a period is not an all-clear.

Colorado lightning by day, last 7 days

Each row is one completed local calendar day.

Day Detected flashes Peak hour Relative
Tue, Sep 29 22 4 PM MDT
Mon, Sep 28 3,055 4 PM MDT
Sun, Sep 27 211 5 PM MDT
Sat, Sep 26 11 12 PM MDT
Fri, Sep 25 10,963 4 PM MDT
Thu, Sep 24 149 11 PM MDT
Wed, Sep 23 1,427 10 PM MDT

Across the last 30 days Colorado recorded 279,701 detected flashes. The busiest day was Saturday, September 19, 2026 with 45,641.

What about right now?

This page is history. These are live.

Live Colorado lightning map Rolling 24-hour counter, heatmap, and individual flash markers with timestamps. Nationwide US strikes, last 24 hours Every state at once, with a 12-hour view for a tighter recent window. Near me Closest recent flash Approximate distance from your location to the nearest returned detection.

Local pages: Denver , Colorado Springs , Aurora , Fort Collins

Questions about Colorado daily lightning counts

How many lightning strikes did Colorado have yesterday?

NOAA GOES East/West GLM detected 22 lightning flashes across Colorado on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 4 PM MDT with 8 flashes in that hour. These are satellite-detected optical flashes, not a confirmed cloud-to-ground strike count.

What counts as a day on this page?

A local calendar day in Colorado (America/Denver), midnight to midnight — not a UTC day. An evening storm that runs past midnight UTC still counts toward the evening it started.

Is this the same as the number on the Colorado lightning map?

No. The map page counts a rolling 24-hour window that moves with the clock. This page counts closed calendar days, so the totals are answering different questions and will not match.

Are these cloud-to-ground strikes?

No. GLM is an optical instrument on a geostationary satellite and detects total lightning, which includes in-cloud flashes. Counts are flash detections, not confirmed ground strikes, and locations are approximate flash centroids.

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