How many lightning strikes hit Washington yesterday?
1,597 lightning flashes were detected across Washington on Sunday, September 6, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 6 PM PDT with 414 flashes in a single hour — roughly 14x a normal day for this state.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, Sep 6 | 1,597 | 6 PM PDT | 1,597 flashes |
| Sat, Sep 5 | 1,645 | 3 PM PDT | 1,645 flashes |
| Fri, Sep 4 | 774 | 5 PM PDT | 774 flashes |
| Thu, Sep 3 | 112 | 4 PM PDT | 112 flashes |
| Wed, Sep 2 | 433 | 5 AM PDT | 433 flashes |
| Tue, Sep 1 | 304 | 7 PM PDT | 304 flashes |
| Mon, Aug 31 | 1 | 2 AM PDT | 1 flashes |
Across the last 30 days Washington recorded 26,033 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 1,597 lightning flashes across Washington on Sunday, September 6, 2026, local time. Activity peaked at 6 PM PDT with 414 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.