Alaska had 415,231 lightning strikes statewide in 2020. That may seem like a lot, but it’s nothing compared to Texas. In 2020, the Second Largest State in the U.S. had 33,816,168 strikes, which led the nation. The Lone Star state also had the #1 slot in 2019.
Florida led the U.S. in strikes per square mile, with 194 events.
Rhode Island had the least lightning events with only 8551 in 2020.
There were 170 million lightning events across the United States in 2020, which was a drop of 52 million from the previous year.
Even the high Arctic receives some flashes. There were 192 events north of 85°N over the course of two days: July 1-2.
The Washington Monuments was struck on June 4.
Vaisala’s U.S. National Lightning Detection Network, records both in-cloud, and cloud to ground lightning flashes.
Source: Vaisala Annual Lightning Report: 2020
January 11th, 2021 at 10:34 PM
Wow, so many!