Thunder and lightning have been blazing across the skies over the past three days, with the highest concentration of electrical discharges in the city centre and in Tras-os-Montes. On Monday alone, the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) recorded around 20,000 lightning strikes.
In Tras-os-Montes, the storm was associated with strong winds with gusts of 102 km/h, recorded in Mogadouro. The municipality also leads in rainfall: 28 liters per square meter in 24 hours. Jorge Miguel Miranda, professor at the Faculty of Science at the University of Lisbon, emphasizes that the records indicate “a very large number of electrical discharges, in the order of tens of thousands.”
IPMA data show that the thunderstorms were caused “by the approach of a high-altitude depression to the Iberian Peninsula, which moved across the continental territory from the southwest to the northeast between the end of the 28th and the morning of the 30th.” The data show that 3,517 ground-directed lightning strikes (18% of the total) and 19,623 cloud-to-cloud lightning strikes were recorded on Monday.
Author: Joao Saramago
Source: CM Jornal
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