- Your chances of being struck by lightning are 1 in
600,000. The odds of being struck in your lifetime is
1 in 3,000.
- Thunder is a shock wave that results from the quick heating and cooling of air along the lightning channel.
- Most forest fires in the United States are caused by lightning.
- There are over 1.4 billion lightning flashes worldwide
every year; 8,640,000 strikes a day; and 100 strikes
per second.
- An average of 20 million cloud-to-ground lightning
strikes occur annually
in the United States.
- The average length of a lightning strike is six miles.
- The temperature of a lightning bolt is 50,000° Fahrenheit or four times the temperature on the sun’s surface.
- The most lightning strikes in the world occur near the village of Kifuka in the eastern mountains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. This area receives on average 158 lightning bolts over each square kilometer each year.
- Florida and the Rocky Mountains are the most lightning prone areas of the United States.
- Florida, the “Lightning Capital of the World,” has more deaths and injuries from lightning strikes than all the other states combined.
- New Mexico has the most lightning deaths per million people—1.88—based on statistics from 1959 to 1994.
- People under age 35 are 85% of lightning victims in the United States.
- Lightning strikes only one person 91% of the time.
- One in five or 20% of strike victims die. About 70% have long-term health effects after being struck by lightning.
- 70% of lightning injuries and fatalities occur in the afternoon.
- National Park Ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977—and he lived to tell about them all!
- The Lightning Field is a sculpture created by Walter De Maria on the barren desert of western New Mexico. This unique Land Art is composed of 400 stainless steel poles arranged in a grid in an area that measures one mile by one kilometer. Visitors can make reservations to stay at a cabin one night at a time and watch lightning in the array.
Over 200 million lightning strikes occur in the US every year.
Photograph © Marc Romanelli/Getty ImagesLightning and Climbing Reading
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