How many lightning strikes hit Washington yesterday?
1,818 lightning flashes were detected across Washington on Saturday, August 15, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 5 PM PDT with 395 flashes in a single hour — there is no comparable baseline yet for this window.
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/Los_Angeles, and totals are aggregated over the Washington bounding box, so cells near a border can fall either side. No detections in a period is not an all-clear.
Washington lightning by day, last 7 days
Each row is one completed local calendar day.
| Day | Detected flashes | Peak hour | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat, Aug 15 | 1,818 | 5 PM PDT | 1,818 flashes |
| Fri, Aug 14 | 1,590 | 4 PM PDT | 1,590 flashes |
| Thu, Aug 13 | 3,479 | 5 PM PDT | 3,479 flashes |
| Wed, Aug 12 | 4,365 | 9 PM PDT | 4,365 flashes |
| Tue, Aug 11 | 0 | — | 0 flashes |
| Mon, Aug 10 | 0 | — | 0 flashes |
| Sun, Aug 9 | 0 | — | 0 flashes |
Across the last 13 days Washington recorded 11,252 detected flashes. The busiest day was Wednesday, August 12, 2026 with 4,365.
Questions about Washington daily lightning counts
How many lightning strikes did Washington have yesterday?
NOAA GOES East/West GLM detected 1,818 lightning flashes across Washington on Saturday, August 15, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 5 PM PDT with 395 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 Washington (America/Los_Angeles), 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 Washington 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.