Product Code Database
The distribution of lightning, or the incidence of individual strikes, in any particular place is highly dependent on its location, climate, and time of year. Lightning does have an underlying spatial distribution. High quality lightning data has only recently become available, but the data indicates that lightning occurs on average times every second over the entire Earth, making a total of about 1.4 billion flashes per year.John E. Oliver (2025). 9781402032646, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. . ISBN 9781402032646
Malaysia and Singapore have one of the highest rates of lightning activity in the world, after Indonesia and Colombia. The city of Teresina in northern Brazil has the third-highest rate of occurrences of lightning strikes in the world. The surrounding region is referred to as the Chapada do Corisco ("Flash Lightning Flatlands").
In the United States, the west coast has the fewest lightning strikes, and Florida sees more lightning than any other area; In 2018, 14 Florida counties ranked in the top 15 counties in the United States for having the highest lightning density. Florida has the largest number of recorded strikes during summer. Much of Florida is a peninsula, bordered by the ocean on three sides with a subtropical climate. The result is the nearly daily development of clouds that produce . For example, "Lightning Alley"—an area from Tampa to Orlando—experiences an extremely high density of lightning strikes. As of 2007, there were as many as 50 strikes per square mile (about 20 per km2) per year. In their 2018 Annual Lightning Report, Vaisala reported there were as many as 24 strikes per square mile (about 9 per km2) per year in Florida. The Empire State Building in New York City is struck by lightning on average 23 times each year, and was once struck 8 times in 24 minutes.Uman, Martin A.' "All About Lightning"; Ch. 6, p. 47, Dover Publications N.Y.; 1986;
Electronic lightning sensors advanced during the 20th century using radio wave disruptions. Originally the expense of such instruments caused only sporadic development. However a small set of sensors in the U.S. employed during a 1979 project by NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory grew into the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN), achieving nationwide coverage in 1989.
The EUCLID network is the European shared network, covering most of the continent apart from some far eastern nations. Collaborative amateur development spurred the formation of the Blitzortung community, which offers real-time lightning strike data from most of the world (as well as historical data dating back to 2008) under the Creative Commons license. In the United States, lightning monitoring is also frequently augmented by highly localized, but typically more dense detection networks such as the Oklahoma Lightning Mapping Array or the North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array, also known as NALMA.
Satellite lightning measurements began in 1997 when NASA and National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan launched the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) aboard the TRMM satellite, providing periodic scan swaths over tropical and sub-tropical portions of the globe until the satellite's was lost in 2015. In 2017 NOAA started deployment of Geostationary Lightning Mappers aboard their GOES-R class satellites, offering continual coverage of much of the land within the western Hemisphere.
Maps of the U.S. lightning strike/km2yr averaged from 1997-2010 are available from Vaisala's webpage for a fee.VAISALA US lightning strike density map [1] Accessed 13 Jul 2017 More detailed U.S. regional lightning maps based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) data centered on different cities are put out by the Cooperative Institute for Applied Meteorological Studies at Texas A&M University.U.S. regional lightning strike maps [2] Accessed 30 Jul 2012
|
|
