What you’re looking at
These are live lightning flashes detected by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-East (GOES-19) Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) over 10-minute intervals across fixed zones of Trinidad and Tobago. You can read more about how the GLM detects lightning here.
Thunderstorms are part of life in the tropics, and in Trinidad and Tobago, near-daily thunderstorms (across or in the vicinity of T&T) are normal during the Wet Season (May-December) every year. This dashboard shows where lightning is currently active in near real time and provides a hazard level indicating how severe the lightning may be, based on the frequency of flashes detected. Notably, it does not differentiate between cloud-to-cloud flashes (more frequent) and cloud-to-ground strikes (dangerous). However, based on known ratios of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground strikes, we were able to devise hazard levels.
| Tier | Peak 10-min Flashes | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| No Risk | 0 | No lightning detected. |
| Low | 1-29 | Isolated, occasional flashes. |
| Moderate | 30-99 | Scattered – an organized thunderstorm. |
| High | 100-249 | Numerous, frequent lightning strikes, with at least 30 cloud-to-ground strikes likely (based on established flash/strike ratios). |
| Very High | 250-499 | Near-constant lightning, which would be considered a severe thunderstorm. |
| Extreme | ≥ 500 in one 10-minute window, or ≥250 sustained for ≥ 30 minutes. | Based on data analyzed over the past decade, this tier across T&T was realized only during the most severe thunderstorms (primarily along the north coast of Venezuela). |
