Yes, we know which song you're humming. Imagine Dragons supplied the title; this autumn Cyprus has been supplying the rest. We won't quote the lyrics, so here are numbers instead.
The 2026/27 water year opened on 1 October with thunder. From 1 to 12 October the 54 stations in our network averaged 28 mm of rain, with 72 mm at Polis Chrysochous, and a satellite saw lightning within 25 km of the island on 8 of those 12 days. The forecast has another round of rain for Limassol and Paphos on Wednesday, with more in Paphos on Thursday. And Kairika now has a lightning page that shows all of this, flash by flash. This article is the tour: how wet it has been, what the satellite saw during the storm of 29 August, what is coming, and how to read the new page.
A wet year, with three exceptional stretches
Some perspective first, because "wettest ever" gets thrown around a lot. Officially, the 2025/26 water year was good, not historic: 617.8 mm, 123% of normal, the 25th-wettest since 1901/02 (the full story is in Fragmata's year in review). Inside that average, three stretches stood out:
- Spring. March to May brought 214 mm, 192% of normal: the wettest spring of all in Kairika's reconstruction back to 1940, and a record at 13 of the 29 Met Department stations with at least twelve years of data.
- August. The wettest August since records began in 1902: 30 mm against a normal of 2.9 mm, much of it in the storm of 29 August (Fragmata's write-up).
- October. Only twelve days in, and already remarkable, as the next section shows.
October: the wettest start since 1940 in the west
In Kairika's model reconstruction (ERA5, going back to 1940), the first six days of October, the latest the model data covers, were the wettest of 87 years at Paphos and Polis Chrysochous, and in the top four at all seven places we track:
| Place | Rain, 1–6 Oct | Normal for those days | Rank since 1940 (of 87) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paphos | 20.4 mm | 0.6 mm | 1st |
| Polis Chrysochous | 29.6 mm | 1.9 mm | 1st |
| Nicosia | 21.2 mm | 2.2 mm | 3rd |
| Larnaca | 16.2 mm | 1.2 mm | 3rd |
| Limassol | 12.4 mm | 0.7 mm | 3rd |
| Troodos | 35.5 mm | 2.8 mm | 3rd |
| Paralimni & Protaras | 10.8 mm | 1.2 mm | 4th |
Normal = 1991–2020 average.
The gauges tell the same story and run to 12 October. Our 54 Met Department stations averaged 28.3 mm, with 28 of them above 25 mm and 49 above 10 mm. The wettest were Polis Chrysochous with 72.0 mm, Pyrgos (Tillyria) with 57.9, Achna with 51.4, Athienou with 50.2 and Platania with 48.9. Two days did most of the work: 2 October (7.4 mm on average) and 4 October (10.9 mm on average, 41 mm at the wettest station). It has been dry since 8 October.
1: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 2.0; Flashes, wider area 32,649; Flashes within 25 km of the island 1,753; 2: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 7.4; Flashes, wider area 57,245; Flashes within 25 km of the island 12,609; 3: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 2.6; Flashes, wider area 49,162; Flashes within 25 km of the island 1,555; 4: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 10.9; Flashes, wider area 72,766; Flashes within 25 km of the island 14,419; 5: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.4; Flashes, wider area 5,165; Flashes within 25 km of the island 27; 6: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 3.0; Flashes, wider area 21,728; Flashes within 25 km of the island 2,046; 7: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 1.9; Flashes, wider area 737; Flashes within 25 km of the island 177; 8: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.0; Flashes, wider area 550; Flashes within 25 km of the island 0; 9: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.0; Flashes, wider area 0; Flashes within 25 km of the island 0; 10: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.0; Flashes, wider area 1,479; Flashes within 25 km of the island 0; 11: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.0; Flashes, wider area 18,860; Flashes within 25 km of the island 0; 12: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.1; Flashes, wider area 80,068; Flashes within 25 km of the island 1,163; 13: Rain, average of 54 stations (mm) 0.0; Flashes, wider area 6,640; Flashes within 25 km of the island 1
- Rain, average of 54 stations (mm)
- Flashes, wider area
- Flashes within 25 km of the island
Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026 · Rain: Cyprus Department of Meteorology
Day by day, 1–13 October. Above the line: rain averaged across 54 stations. Below: lightning flashes, the pale bar for the whole wider area and the solid one within 25 km of the island.
The wet days were also the electric ones. 2 and 4 October each produced more than 12,000 flashes within 25 km of the island, and over 3,000 of 4 October's were over land itself. But rain and lightning are different things. On 11 and 12 October thunderstorms lit up the sea (about 18,900 flashes on the 11th and 80,000 on the 12th across the wider area) while the stations stayed dry; on the 12th only about 1,200 flashes came within 25 km of the coast.
The storm of 29 August
That record August ended with one storm that hit the whole island at once. Here is what the satellite saw.
Late August is supposed to be dry. On 29 August 2026 a European weather satellite counted 109,252 lightning flashes across the sea and coasts around Cyprus — 17,648 within 25 km of the island and 9,447 over the island itself. The stations underneath recorded rain at 50 of 54 sites, 43 of them above 10 mm, with Achna collecting 68.1 mm. The day before, the wettest station had gathered 3.2 mm; the day after, 0.3 mm.
Hour by hour
0:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 920, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 1:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 846, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 2:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 1,940, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 3:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 2,411, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 4:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 3,273, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 5:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 4,334, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 6:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 7,415, Within 25 km of the island: 160, Over land (+500 m): 0; 7:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 8,082, Within 25 km of the island: 58, Over land (+500 m): 1; 8:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 8,802, Within 25 km of the island: 13, Over land (+500 m): 0; 9:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 11,963, Within 25 km of the island: 433, Over land (+500 m): 69; 10:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 15,513, Within 25 km of the island: 4,788, Over land (+500 m): 2,697; 11:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 14,222, Within 25 km of the island: 6,512, Over land (+500 m): 4,960; 12:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 10,072, Within 25 km of the island: 3,746, Over land (+500 m): 1,186; 13:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 7,276, Within 25 km of the island: 712, Over land (+500 m): 157; 14:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 3,333, Within 25 km of the island: 470, Over land (+500 m): 182; 15:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 2,330, Within 25 km of the island: 567, Over land (+500 m): 142; 16:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 1,605, Within 25 km of the island: 162, Over land (+500 m): 43; 17:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 150, Within 25 km of the island: 27, Over land (+500 m): 10; 18:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 18, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 19:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 14, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 20:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 93, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 21:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 1,966, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 22:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 2,402, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0; 23:00 — Wider area, incl. sea and coasts: 272, Within 25 km of the island: 0, Over land (+500 m): 0
- Wider area, incl. sea and coasts
- Within 25 km of the island
- Over land (+500 m)
Busiest hour over land: 4,960
Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026
“Over land” includes a 500 m margin around the coast; “within 25 km” is measured from the island's outline; the wider area is 33–37°N, 30.5–36.5°E.
Flashes were being detected from midnight, but far out to sea; by 06:00 the wider area was seeing more than 7,000 an hour. Near the island the main event ran from 10:00 to 13:00. Over land the first flash was a lone one at 07:57; activity began in earnest after 09:00, the busiest hour was 11:00–11:59 with 4,960 flashes, and the last came at 17:25. Across the whole area the busiest hour was 10:00–10:59 with 15,513, and the busiest ten minutes started at 10:50, with 3,422.
A storm on the move
00:00–05:00 · 797
05:00–08:00 · 11,069
08:00–10:00 · 17,168
10:00–12:00 · 26,442
12:00–15:00 · 18,543
15:00–24:00 · 5,760
Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026
Each square is about 10 km across; counts are for the area shown.
Overnight the activity sat far to the north-east, over the sea. By morning a broad band had spread north and north-west of the island. Between 10:00 and 12:00 a line of flashes crossed the island and carried on east over the sea; through the afternoon the activity spread east and south-east, and by evening only the east was still active.
Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026
The same day as a loop: each frame is half an hour of flashes, local time. The marker on the timeline shows where you are in the day.
Flash by flash
Every dot below is one detected flash, placed at its real time and position. Press play, drag the timeline, or jump to the busiest half hour. At 1× it is real time; at the default speed a minute passes every second.
Where the lightning was, and where the rain fell
Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026 · Rain: Cyprus Department of Meteorology
Lightning and rain did not line up neatly. Only about 9% of the day's flashes were over land; most were over the sea to the north and east, while the rain fell over land — from the Paphos hills to the Famagusta plain. Satellite flash positions carry some uncertainty, so read the map as the broad pattern, not a station-by-station match. Our rain stations cover the south and centre of the island only, so the north shows lightning but no rain readings.
| Station | District | Elevation | Rain on 29 Aug |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achna | Famagusta | 56 m | 68.1 mm |
| Nicosia (State Fair) | Nicosia | 172 m | 49.5 mm |
| Pyrgos (Tillyria) | Nicosia | 574 m | 46.9 mm |
| Athienou | Larnaca | 178 m | 44.1 mm |
| Kampos | Nicosia | 611 m | 42.2 mm |
Thirteen of the 54 stations passed 25 mm. Across our seven reference places, the ERA5 model averaged 10.1 mm for the day, from 23.9 mm at Paphos to 4.7 mm at Polis Chrysochous.
How unusual was it?
On 13 February, the wettest day of the past year by that same seven-place average (28.3 mm), the same three measures gave 77 flashes over land, 174 within 25 km and 5,547 in the wider area. On 29 August, with about a third of that rain by the same measure, they were 9,447, 17,648 and 109,252 — roughly 120 times as many over land, 100 times within 25 km and 20 times across the wider area. Lightning is not a rain gauge: a summer storm can be electrically fierce and still fairly modest in rainfall, and a soaking winter front can be nearly silent.
How much energy was that?
A rough sum, in orders of magnitude only. The literature puts the energy of one flash at about 0.7 GJ inside a cloud and about 7 GJ for a cloud-to-ground flash (Price et al., 1997, as cited here). The satellite sees both kinds, so assume three in-cloud flashes for every ground flash: about 2.2 GJ per flash on average. The 17,648 flashes within 25 km of the island on 29 August then add up to about 40 TJ, or 11 GWh: roughly three quarters of what Cyprus generates on an average day (about 16 GWh, from 5,764 GWh in 2024). The whole 2025/26 rain year, about 115,000 flashes near the island, comes to roughly 70 GWh, about four days of the island's electricity. Don't expect to harvest it: nearly all of this energy ends up as heat, light and thunder in the air, less than 1% reaches the strike point, and the true figure could be several times higher or lower.
What is coming this week
The model forecast (Open-Meteo, as of the morning of 14 October) puts the next round of rain in the south-west. On Wednesday 14 October it shows about 18 mm at Limassol and 17 mm at Paphos; on Thursday 15 October about 17 mm at Paphos and 1 mm at Limassol. Nicosia and Larnaca stay almost dry. Treat the amounts as a guide: single-point forecasts of heavy rain can be well out, and this model does not forecast lightning. For the latest see Rain, and for official warnings the Department of Meteorology.
The new lightning page
Kairika's lightning page turns the satellite's flash data into thunder days by month (a thunder day has at least ten flashes over the island itself), the busiest storm days with a flash-by-flash replay, an hour-by-month heat grid and a density map. It is a static snapshot, regenerated by hand rather than live, and currently covers October 2024 to 13 October 2026. Two cautions: a flash is an optical detection, not a ground strike, and its position is good to roughly 3–5 km, so "over land" counts near the coast are fuzzy. It is a look back, not a warning.
Method: lightning is optical flashes detected by EUMETSAT's Meteosat Third Generation Lightning Imager (Level-2 flash product, 10-minute files from the EUMETSAT Data Store), counted in 0.1° cells. “Over land” means within 500 m of a simplified coastline of the whole island (Natural Earth), so counts near the coast are approximate; “within 25 km” is measured from the same coastline. All detections are included; about 9% of the wider-area flashes carry the product's low-confidence flag. Times are Cyprus local time (UTC+3). Rain: station daily totals from the Department of Meteorology feed, rolled up by Kairika (our 54 stations cover the south and centre of the island); annual, seasonal and monthly figures are the Department's, as reported in Fragmata's articles. Place rankings are ERA5 via Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0) against 1991–2020 normals, ranked over 1940–2026; the latest ERA5 day was 6 October. The forecast is the Open-Meteo model as of the morning of 14 October. Flashes are not strikes, and this is a look back, not a warning — for official warnings see the Department of Meteorology. Contains modified EUMETSAT Meteosat data 2026.