Weather Lightning struck 320,000 times in Switzerland this summer

There were a total of 320,036 lightning strikes in Switzerland this summer - most of them in the cantons of Bern (46,412) and St. Gallen (28,405). In contrast, only 135 flashes of lightning were recorded in the canton of Basel-Stadt.

Overall, the number of lightning strikes per square kilometer this summer was higher in German-speaking Switzerland than in western and southern Switzerland. This was reported by the private weather service Meteonews in a press release on Thursday.

The list of cantons with the most lightning discharges after Bern and St. Gallen includes Graubünden, Zurich, Lucerne and Aargau. The highest lightning density among the municipalities was recorded in Gonten AI with 59.3 lightning strikes per square meter and Hundwil AR with 58.8.

The strongest lightning in the past meteorological summer was recorded in Brusio GR on July 1 with 286,000 amperes. According to Meteonews, this was almost 18,000 times more powerful than the 16 amperes available in a standard household socket. The average strength of a lightning strike was 7,310 amperes.

This summer there were 267,872 cloud-to-earth flashes and 52,164 cloud-to-cloud flashes. The day with the most lightning was 12 August 2024 with 49,517 flashes. There was even more lightning on 1 September with 54,878 flashes, but these are already counted as part of the meteorological autumn.

Compared to the period from June 1 to August 31, 2023, the total number of lightning strikes in Switzerland in summer fell by around 42,000. The summer with the most lightning in the past five years was 2021 with around 438,000 flashes. The data comes from the Linet (Lightning Detection Network) lightning detection system.

SDA