Newsflash! This Texas city is the lightning capital of the US. See where it strikes most
From earthquakes and tornadoes to hurricanes and snow, Texas has weather variations as wide as the state itself. So perhaps it's not so shocking that the Lone Star State is also home to the U.S. lightning capital.
Vaisala Xweather, a Finnish company offering products and services for industrial and environmental measurements, has released a report on 2024 lightning events around the world. In its analysis, Vaisala defined "lightning events" as individual pulses within in-cloud flashes as well as individual strokes within cloud-to ground flashes.
If Texas doesn't strike you as a very en-lightning place, think again. Before you bolt, check out the electrifying findings of Vaisala's analysis.
With 735 lightning events per square kilometer in 2024, the city of Teague claimed the title of lightning capital of the country. Teague had nearly as many events as the states with the second and third most combined: Orlando, Florida had 414 events and Kingsland, Georgia had 377.
In all, the world recorded 2,227,370,623 lightning events, with around 9.4% (209,484,916) in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of all events in 2024 occurred over land.
You read that right — not only did the Lone Star State have the highest lightning count in the country, it had more than the second, third and fourth states combined. Texas had a flashy 40 million lightning events in 2024.
Florida trailed (far, far) behind Texas with 15 million lightning events, followed (much more closely) by Oklahoma with 13 million. Texas had four times more lightning than the fourth-ranked state, Kansas.
The seven states with the most lightning events accounted for the majority (over 50%) of the country's lightning. Meanwhile, the 14 states with the least claimed less than 1% of all lightning in the U.S.
The five states with the highest lightning counts are as follows:
Texas - 40M
Florida - 15M
Oklahoma - 13M
Kansas - 10M
Louisiana - 9M
There's a striking disclaimer to be made here: Texas is a big state in terms of land — the second biggest by area after Alaska. It then makes sense to get more light shows than smaller states.
With this in mind, Vaisala also calculated lightning density. Data was gathered on how many lightning events occurred per square kilometer within each state. And while the Lone Star State remained in the top five, the playing field evened considerably.
At the top of the list with 91 lightning events was Florida, 184 times more than Alaska, the third-fewest. Twenty states had more than 20 events per square kilometer in 2024.
Mississippi, which consistently ranked fourth in lightning density from 2016 to 2023, dropped to 10th on last year's list. The five states with the highest lightning density are as follows:
Florida - 91 events per km²
Oklahoma - 75 events per km²
Louisiana - 71 events per km²
Arkansas - 63 events per km²
Texas - 58 events per km²
Unlike the states with the highest lightning counts, the size of states had less influence on those with the fewest lightning counts. Instead, location was a significant factor. Although Rhode Island is about five times smaller than Hawaii, the northeastern state had over three times as many lightning events.
In fact, when measuring lightning density, Hawaii had fewer events per square kilometer than any other state. This is largely due to its location in the Pacific Ocean: The National Weather Service reports the cluster of islands sees fewer thunderstorms, lightning, hail, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts than the continental states. When Hawaii does get such phenomena, they also tend to be less severe.
Least lighting count
District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) - 2,361
Hawaii - 3,003
Rhode Island - 10,256
Washington - 76,841
New Hampshire - 87,716
Least lightning density
Hawaii - 0.2 events per km²
Washington - 0.4 events per km²
Alaska - 0.5 events per km²
California - 0.6 events per km²
Oregon - 0.8 events per km²
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lightning struck Texas more than any other state in 2024, data shows
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