What to Know About US Lightning Strikes

Oburg News 9 -- June 24 9:09 p.m.

                          Lightning strikes are a significant natural hazard in the United States, with the country experiencing an estimated 20 to 25 million cloud-to-ground strikes each year. These strikes are most common during summer months and in regions with frequent thunderstorms, such as Florida, Texas and the Gulf Coast. The National Weather Service reports that lightning is among the top weather-related killers, causing around 20 to 30 fatalities annually and injuring hundreds more.

                          While the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are roughly 1 in 1.2 million, risk increases with outdoor activities like boating, hiking or sports. Most lightning-related injuries occur when people are caught outside during storms and fail to seek proper shelter.

Public safety campaigns emphasize the importance of heading indoors at the first sign of thunder and following the rule: "When thunder roars, go indoors."

How is Lightning Formed?

Earth is struck by some 44 bolts of lightning each second, on average. Despite this, physicists have long been unsure exactly how most flashes get started.

It is well-established that lightning occurs after clouds build up—and then dramatically release—electrical energy. But a puzzle lies in how clouds' electric fields that are simply too weak to overcome the insulating properties or air can they cause the "initial breakdown event," which sparks off a powerful discharge.

These are cascades of subatomic particles and ionized nuclei produced in the Earth's atmosphere by high-energy particles ("cosmic rays") from both our sun and violent events like supernova explosions in our Milky Way and even beyond.

Further experiment and model-based studies will be needed to refine our understanding of this lightning trigger phenomenon, the researchers note.

"To directly relate lightning initiation with CRS, it is necessary to detect the CRS on the ground with an array of particle detectors—and to correlate the detected CRS time and direction with the lightning initiation," the researchers wrote.

The difficulty with this, they explain, is that while lightning radio frequency signals can be mapped using ground sensors from any direction, the cosmic rays cannot.

                     Instead, they could come from random directions into the cloud and easily land outside of any detection array placed on the ground, making correlated observation challenging.