All available information concerning lightning-caused casualties and damages in the NOAA publication Storm Data has been analyzed. This data source has 3239 deaths, 9818 injuries, and 19,814 property-damage reports attributed to lightning from 1959-1994 in the U.S. The number of lightning casualty and damage events is less variable from year to year than from nearly all other weather causes, so lightning is a constant and widespread threat to the thunderstorm season.
Florida leads the nation in the number of deaths and injuries, while Pennsylvania has the largest number of damage reports. When population is taken into account, New Mexico and Wyoming lead the nation in death, injury, and casualty rates per million people. Highest rates of population-weighted damage reports are on the plains.
All types of lightning reports in Storm Data reach maxima during July. Damage reports are spread more evenly through the year than are casualties. In northern regions of the U.S., casualties and damages have narrower distributions centered on summer than southern regions. Two-thirds of the casualties occur between noon and 6 p.m. There are relatively frequent damage reports during the night in the plains and midwest states.
Most incidents involve one person. Comparison with other datasets shows that Storm Data entries tend to include more expensive widely-known events and to exclude most of the small losses.