The lightning that struck a house in Porto Moniz last night was the only atmospheric electrical discharge to hit the ground among the almost 600 lightning registered this Friday in a radius of 200 km around the Madeira Archipelago, between dusk and the end of the night.
The IPMA lightning detector network in Madeira – state-of-the-art LS7002 detectors, installed in Porto Moniz/Santa, Santana, Funchal and Porto Santo – recorded 592 lightning strikes (155 positive lightning strikes, 236 negative lightning strikes, 201 intra-cloud lightning strikes) in the last 6 hours of yesterday (between 18:01 and 23:59).
Most of the thunderstorms occurred off the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo, in the east/northeast, with the period of greatest electrical activity in the atmosphere of the referenced area occurring between late afternoon and early evening (from 6 pm to 8 pm). ), when almost three hundred lightning strikes were recorded.
Curiously, it was during the period of lowest activity – between 10 pm and 10:30 pm only two electrical discharges were registered – that lightning would strike the island of Madeira. This happened in Porto Moniz at 22:14:28. The other strike happened tens of kilometers away, far off Porto Santo.
It should also be noted that last night, just after the thunder that shook Porto Moniz, there was a heavy downpour, the most significant occurring this Friday in the entire Region, with the extreme value in the 1-hour interval reaching a yellow warning. (11.5 mm/1h).