Improving Lightning Awareness In South Florida

The state of Florida is the lightning capital of the country. With thunderstorms occurring most afternoons during the late spring, summer and early fall, residents and visitors to Florida are particularly susceptible to the often-dangerous impacts from lightning. In fact, during the last 22 years there have been over 200 documented injuries and deaths across South Florida alone. The objective of this project is to investigate methods that can encourage increased awareness for South Floridians of the dangers of lightning. Using NOAA’s Storm Event Database from January 1996 through August 2018 to collect data on lightning injuries and deaths, as well as lightning flash data from Vaisala’s National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) via NOAA’s Severe Weather Data Inventory, we recorded the number and location of lightning strikes which best matched the location and time indicated in the NOAA Storm Event Database. We then measured the distance between the core of the parent storm (often perceived to be the most dangerous area) using reflectivity data from the National Weather Service’s Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR 88-D), and the lightning strikes suspected to have caused the fatality or injury in each event. Upon aggregating all cases, this study reveals a particularly impactful finding: most lightning strikes that caused injury or death occurred a few to several miles from the core of the parent storm. The ultimate goal of this work is to lay the foundation for data-driven outreach to improve lightning awareness, and promote safety campaigns oriented at limiting the occurrence of injury and fatalities directly related to lightning in South Florida.