Damn Florida. That makes sense after seeing the video of the couple that moved to Florida and lighting struck near them and scared the shit out of them.
I knew other people got more lightning where they lived, but I didn’t realize it was like everyone else had more lightning compared to west coast
Is this just based on cloud-to-ground strikes?
This is fantastic. Conveys info beautifully. Well done
The west generally doesn’t get lighting but when they do it results in wildfires
Is God smiting certain areas more than others? How interesting.
What’s up with Maine? They don’t get coastal storms?
I adore thunder and lightning – I should move.
I’m no meteorologist, but it probably has to do with humidity.
Imagine how many more wildfires there would be in the west if California etc. had as much lightning as Kansas or Florida.
Very, very cool visualization
Hardly ever get epic thunderstorms in central California 🙁
Huh. I didn’t expect it to have such a circular distribution centered on the south. I kinda figured everywhere East of the Rockies got a lot of thunderstorms. Yeah I’m on the West Coast 😂
Why is god so.mad at the south?
Holly shit, the great lakes are just constantly bombarded at 30+ everywhere!
It looks like a very dense set of data, but do you have a plot with the actual data points to show how much interpolation you’ve done?
Also, I’m guessing you’ve used 2017-2023 because that was the data available, but are there any patterns if the data is shown for each year – i.e. more strikes, or changes in location.
I moved from the south to nyc and everyone thinks I’m lying when I say the thunderstorms are weak and never happen very often compared to the south. Now I can use this for proof.
Sad. I used to live in a red area and now live in a green area. I miss the storms…
Sometimes I don’t see lightning for 6 straight months. And when storms do come, I go and sit out on my covered porch to watch them and my neighbors think I’m a weirdo. The things they call “storms” here are pitiful. Also “radar indicated” tornados aren’t usually tornados. They just don’t have tornado chasers to verify them in the NorthEast like they do in the Plains.
Well done! What about Alaska and Hawaii? Or maybe change title to continental US?
Funny how Cape Canaveral gets the most in the country.
Lot of overlap with the people that call the glowy type insects “Lightning Bugs” vs “Fireflies”.
I’m the Southeast, it looks like there’s a correlation between National Forests and less lightning reported here. How is this data produced? Could the remote regions reduce frequency?
Best post I’ve seen on here in a while!
we barely get thunderstorms in california and while i’m sure it’s one of the few things going for us in terms of wildfire risks, i fucking hate it here in the city
I don’t think I saw this in the comments, does anyone know what this is the distribution?
Pretty clear what’s NOT causing the wildfires in CA, It’s all about poor forest management, and shit maintenance of the power grid. Pathetic.
By “Annual Mean”, does that mean this is not a weighted average (i.e, each year carries equal weight)?
What’s going on with the west coast? This is roughly tracking rainfall except the west coast should have far more lightening if it was all just rainfall.
Beautiful work, and very informative ! I wonder what causes some local white spots, for example the one in the middle of Montgomery county Texas ?
Thought this was a poverty/obesity/illiteracy map at first glance.
This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing!
Cool, and very interesting! Is this raw data, or is a model involved?
Since this is /r/dataisbeautiful, I have some suggestions related to the colorscale. The rainbow colorscale is very popular, but there are much better perceptually uniform colorscales out there that don’t draw your eye to artificial boundaries between colors.
[This website has collected a lot of the best perceptually uniform colorscales.](https://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps/) Batlow isn’t as pretty, but is very well designed. If I need to use a rainbow for historical reasons, I use CET-R1 [from here](https://colorcet.com/), which also does a better job than this comment describing the problem and reasons to care.
“we’ve had a rash of lightning strikes”
A map of the most sinful states.
Huh, finally realizing how accurate a team name “Tampa Bay Lightning” is.
As someone that lives in Coastal Georgia and had lighting strike his front yard which blew out an underground water line a few weeks ago…can confirm…..
Lightning doesn’t strike on the west coast!?! WHAT? That completely blows my mind. I’ve always lived in a red zone, and just assumed there’s always severe lightning with storms everywhere.
I wonder if the reason why there is a higher concentration of lightning strikes in southern Illinois/Indiana is because of the Mississippi/Ohio Rivers converging and possible weather patterns
![[OC] U.S. Annual Mean Lightning Strike Density (this took me a long time)](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ndazihu8mwkd1-1920x1024.jpeg)
39 comments
Damn Florida. That makes sense after seeing the video of the couple that moved to Florida and lighting struck near them and scared the shit out of them.
I knew other people got more lightning where they lived, but I didn’t realize it was like everyone else had more lightning compared to west coast
Is this just based on cloud-to-ground strikes?
This is fantastic. Conveys info beautifully. Well done
The west generally doesn’t get lighting but when they do it results in wildfires
Is God smiting certain areas more than others? How interesting.
What’s up with Maine? They don’t get coastal storms?
I adore thunder and lightning – I should move.
I’m no meteorologist, but it probably has to do with humidity.
Imagine how many more wildfires there would be in the west if California etc. had as much lightning as Kansas or Florida.
Very, very cool visualization
Hardly ever get epic thunderstorms in central California 🙁
Huh. I didn’t expect it to have such a circular distribution centered on the south. I kinda figured everywhere East of the Rockies got a lot of thunderstorms. Yeah I’m on the West Coast 😂
Why is god so.mad at the south?
Holly shit, the great lakes are just constantly bombarded at 30+ everywhere!
It looks like a very dense set of data, but do you have a plot with the actual data points to show how much interpolation you’ve done?
Also, I’m guessing you’ve used 2017-2023 because that was the data available, but are there any patterns if the data is shown for each year – i.e. more strikes, or changes in location.
I moved from the south to nyc and everyone thinks I’m lying when I say the thunderstorms are weak and never happen very often compared to the south. Now I can use this for proof.
Sad. I used to live in a red area and now live in a green area. I miss the storms…
Sometimes I don’t see lightning for 6 straight months. And when storms do come, I go and sit out on my covered porch to watch them and my neighbors think I’m a weirdo. The things they call “storms” here are pitiful. Also “radar indicated” tornados aren’t usually tornados. They just don’t have tornado chasers to verify them in the NorthEast like they do in the Plains.
Well done! What about Alaska and Hawaii? Or maybe change title to continental US?
Funny how Cape Canaveral gets the most in the country.
Lot of overlap with the people that call the glowy type insects “Lightning Bugs” vs “Fireflies”.
[https://i.insider.com/5b5880dc42e1cc694e4f3959](https://i.insider.com/5b5880dc42e1cc694e4f3959)
I’m the Southeast, it looks like there’s a correlation between National Forests and less lightning reported here. How is this data produced? Could the remote regions reduce frequency?
Best post I’ve seen on here in a while!
we barely get thunderstorms in california and while i’m sure it’s one of the few things going for us in terms of wildfire risks, i fucking hate it here in the city
I don’t think I saw this in the comments, does anyone know what this is the distribution?
Pretty clear what’s NOT causing the wildfires in CA, It’s all about poor forest management, and shit maintenance of the power grid. Pathetic.
By “Annual Mean”, does that mean this is not a weighted average (i.e, each year carries equal weight)?
What’s going on with the west coast? This is roughly tracking rainfall except the west coast should have far more lightening if it was all just rainfall.
Beautiful work, and very informative ! I wonder what causes some local white spots, for example the one in the middle of Montgomery county Texas ?
Thought this was a poverty/obesity/illiteracy map at first glance.
This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing!
Cool, and very interesting! Is this raw data, or is a model involved?
Since this is /r/dataisbeautiful, I have some suggestions related to the colorscale. The rainbow colorscale is very popular, but there are much better perceptually uniform colorscales out there that don’t draw your eye to artificial boundaries between colors.
[This website has collected a lot of the best perceptually uniform colorscales.](https://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps/) Batlow isn’t as pretty, but is very well designed. If I need to use a rainbow for historical reasons, I use CET-R1 [from here](https://colorcet.com/), which also does a better job than this comment describing the problem and reasons to care.
“we’ve had a rash of lightning strikes”
A map of the most sinful states.
Huh, finally realizing how accurate a team name “Tampa Bay Lightning” is.
As someone that lives in Coastal Georgia and had lighting strike his front yard which blew out an underground water line a few weeks ago…can confirm…..
Lightning doesn’t strike on the west coast!?! WHAT? That completely blows my mind. I’ve always lived in a red zone, and just assumed there’s always severe lightning with storms everywhere.
I wonder if the reason why there is a higher concentration of lightning strikes in southern Illinois/Indiana is because of the Mississippi/Ohio Rivers converging and possible weather patterns
Oh wow, [lightning causes obesity](https://www.maxmasnick.com/media/2011-11-15-obesity_map/obesity_by_county_large.png)
I can tell you growing up in Volusia County FL, we did not play around with thunderstorms due to the volume of lightning.