The United States is one of the top countries worldwide for severe thunderstorms and lightning discharges, whether it be a supercell thunderstorm prowling the Plains or a storm popping up in Florida on a humid summer’s day.
Yet even though the country is an active area for lightning, such activity still varies considerably from year to year because of changing weather patterns. Newly released data, for example, shows that 2020 saw fewer lightning strikes than in the year before, according to Vaisala, a company that operates a national network of instruments that can pinpoint the location of each cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-cloud lightning discharge.
Number of lightning strikes, 2020
0
200+
Oklahoma
City
Orlando
Houston
1000 MILES
Notes: Number of strikes is for each
2-by-2-km grid. Comparable data
for Alaska and Hawaii is not available.
Number of lightning strikes, 2020
0
200+
Oklahoma
City
Orlando
Houston
500 MILES
Notes: Number of strikes is for each 2-by-2-km grid.
Comparable data for Alaska and Hawaii is not available.
Number of lightning strikes, 2020
0
200+
Seattle
Boston
Minneapolis
San
Francisco
New York
Chicago
Salt Lake
City
Washington, D.C.
Denver
St. Louis
Los
Angeles
Oklahoma City
Atlanta
Dallas
500 MILES
Orlando
Orlando
Houston
Miami
Notes: Number of strikes is for each 2-by-2-km grid.
Comparable data for Alaska and Hawaii is not available.
Number of lightning strikes, 2020
0
200+
Seattle
Boston
Minneapolis
Detroit
San
Francisco
New York
Chicago
Salt Lake
City
Washington, D.C.
Denver
St. Louis
Los
Angeles
Oklahoma City
Atlanta
Dallas
500 MILES
Houston
Miami
Notes: Number of strikes is for each 2-by-2-km grid.
Comparable data for Alaska and Hawaii is not available.
Number of lightning strikes, 2020
0
200+
Seattle
Boston
Minneapolis
Detroit
New York
Chicago
San
Francisco
Salt Lake
City
Washington, D.C.
Denver
St. Louis
Los
Angeles
Oklahoma City
Atlanta
Dallas
500 MILES
Houston
Notes: Number of strikes is for each 2-by-2-km grid.
Comparable data for Alaska and Hawaii is not available.
Miami
In all, the United States saw more than 170 million cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground “lightning events” in the Lower 48 states during 2020, Vaisala reported last month. This was a reduction of 52.4 million lightning events compared with 2019, for a 23 percent decrease.
This was the biggest year-to-year drop in lightning discharges in Vaisala’s 31 years of record-keeping.
[Mapping America’s wicked weather and deadly disasters]
According to Ryan Said, a meteorologist at Vaisala, the decline in lightning activity during 2020 reflects high-pressure areas that parked themselves over traditionally storm-prone regions, leading to drier-than-average weather. This included the Central and southern Plains states, which typically see some of the most severe weather, including tornadoes, during the spring and early summer but were eerily quiet this past year.
Between April and June, the National Lightning Detection Network recorded 62 percent fewer cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in the Central and Southern Plains as well as Gulf Coast compared with the same period in 2019, and 52 percent fewer cloud-to-ground strokes than the 2015-2019 April-June average.
A lightning bolt leaps out of a storm northeast of Chester, Okla., on May 14. (Matthew Cappucci/The Washington Post)
Lightning in the West triggered massive wildfires, including a rare lightning siege in California during a four-day period in August. While California saw below-average lightning activity during the year, more than 20 percent of the annual total occurred during the four-day period from August 15 to 18. Many of these strikes were so-called “continuing current” lightning strikes, which tend to be more powerful than other discharges, and are therefore more capable of starting wildfires.
Cloud-to-ground lightning, Aug. 15-24
All lightning strikes
Continuing current lightning strikes
Wildfires, Aug. 15-24
Fires detected by satellite
Redding
San
Francisco
Los Angeles
100 MILES
OREGON
Cloud-to-ground
lightning, Aug. 15-24
Eureka
All lightning strikes
Redding
Continuing current
lightning strikes
Wildfires, Aug. 15-24
Fires detected by satellite
Sacramento
NEVADA
San
Francisco
Fresno
Bakersfield
Santa
Barbara
Los Angeles
MEXICO
San Diego
100 MILES
OREGON
Cloud-to-ground lightning, Aug. 15-24
All lightning strikes
Continuing current lightning strikes
Wildfires, Aug. 15-24
Redding
Eureka
Fires detected by satellite
Sacramento
NEVADA
San
Francisco
Fresno
Bakersfield
Santa
Barbara
Los
Angeles
San Diego
MEXICO
50 MILES
“This onslaught of lightning, which was accompanied by very little rainfall, triggered four wildfire complexes that combined to burn more than 1.8 million acres of land,” Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist at Vaisala, said in a news release.
[Western wildfires: Blazes fueled by climate change engulf vast region in crisis]
In Washington State, there was more lightning activity than usual, and more than half of the state’s annual lightning occurred on May 30.
Crews from the Boulder Creek Fire Department keep an eye on a flare-up from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire on Aug. 22 along Highway 9 in Boulder Creek, Calif. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
There were exceptions to the rule of less lightning activity than usual, however. Michigan, for example, saw one of its most active lightning years, with 2.3 million detected lightning events.
Change in lightning strokes,
2015-2019 vs. 2020
Half as
many
More
than 3x
No
change
Minneapolis
San
Francisco
Houston
Orlando
500 MILES
Change in lightning strokes,
2015-2019 vs. 2020
Half as
many
More
than 3x
No
change
Minneapolis
San
Francisco
Houston
Orlando
Orlando
500 MILES
Change in lightning strikes, 2015-2019 vs. 2020
Half as many
No change
More than 3x
Seattle
Boston
Minneapolis
New York
San
Francisco
Washington,
D.C.
St. Louis
Oklahoma City
Los
Angeles
Dallas
Houston
500 MILES
As it typically does, Texas ranked at the top of the list for lightning during 2020, with more than 33 million cloud-to-ground strokes and cloud pulses. This was followed by Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Florida led the country with the most lightning strikes per square mile, with 194.
About this story
Lightning data is from Vaisala. Fire data is from National Interagency Fire Center.
