Image: dreamstime
Floods and tornadoes kill more people in the United States than lightning does, a study finds.
In fact, lightning strikes have been the third-leading cause of storm-related deaths since 2006 and may soon drop to fourth place, below hurricanes, said study author William Roeder, a meteorologist in Rockledge, Fla. Only 28 lightning deaths have been reported so far in 2012.
Lightning accounted for 20.1 percent of storm deaths between 1982 and 2011, Roeder found, while hurricanes took another 17.5 percent. Tornadoes were responsible for 27.6 percent of fatalities, and floods killed 34.7 percent of people who died during storms.
The downward trend in lightning deaths began in 1940, with the urbanization of the United States, Roeder told OurAmazingPlanet. About 300 people died from lightning every year before the '40s, most of them working on farms or outdoors. Now, with changes in work patterns and the advent of national safety campaigns, Roeder's study predicts 31.7 deaths this year.
The drop to third place has gone unnoticed because of the way official statistics are tracked, Roeder said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a 30-year running average, which predicts 54 people should die by lightning strikes this year. But safety campaigns kicked off in 2001 sharply dropped the number of lightning deaths each year, so that 30-year average consistently overestimates fatalities because it includes data from before the recent decline, Roeder said. "Running averages only work if you assume your data is isn't changing over time, which is good for floods, but not lightning," he said. Even a 10-year estimate doesn't completely eliminate the problem, because one extreme year will skew the result, Roeder said.
Roeder's work revises predictions of lightning deaths by fitting a statistical curve to the historic data instead of averaging over time. "That gives me the value expected for this year and in the future, and I can also put some error bars on it and answer questions like, 'Was 2011 a record low year for lightning deaths?'" Roeder said. There were 26 reported fatalities in 2011. "That was just inside the error bars of what my curve said it should have been. It was low, but it wasn't statistically significant," he said. Roeder is a lighting safety advocate who conceived national slogans including "Don't be fried, go inside," and "When thunder roars, go indoors."
"Those of us in the lightning safety community like to joke that we're putting ourselves out of business, and that's a good thing," he said.
Roeder said he would like to see even fewer lightning deaths, to "find a brand new way to bend that curve even lower."
"Lightning kills only about 10 percent of people it strikes. About 90 percent survive, but many suffer life-long debilitating injuries," Roeder said. Since 1995, more than 80 percent of victims have been men, according to NOAA statistics.
"Lightning is more frequent and a bigger threat than most people usually know."
The research was detailed at the National Weather Association's annual meeting in October.
- Electric Earth: Stunning Images of Lightning
- Is It Possible to Have Lightning Without Thunder?
- Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom
See what we're tweeting about
5 Comments
Add CommentMost interesting - the population of the U.S. has more than doubled since 1940, making the decline in deaths even more significant! I saw no mention of population being considered in the forecast model, but then I didn't see where this silly article even mentioned whether the statistics represented lightening deaths in the U.S. or worldwide...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the NOAA can predict that 54 people should die by lightning strikes this year, I wish they would instead tell those 54 people so they shouldn't have to die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an interesting and immensely significant sidelight on the information presented in the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article mentions that a fairly steady 300 people per year before 1940 were struck my lightning. And the implied connection with urban rise suggests that those 300 were all in rural areas. But being hit by lightning can be as random a process as seeing a tornado. It is insisted that the increase in tornadoes comes from more people living in the nation, that fewer people would naturally result in fewer tornadoes being seen.
But, then, fewer people living in non urban areas shouild also result in the number of lightning strikes not being constant! Fewer people, by that insistence, should result in fewer lightning strikes.
Even more so. Lightning strikes are enormously limited incidents. Tornadoes can be seen from a distance and their path can be discerned even if they aren't seen, by the destruction. Even if there were fewer people in the nation, there should have been individuals within viewing distance, as much as a few miles away, of a tornado, whereas, they have to be within inches of where lightning strikes because conditions locally were right.
There is no explanation for tornado numbers to have been roughly steady at about 180 per year before about 1950 except that the actual number of tornadoes was that low. Interestingly, notice that the decrease in lightning victims seems to coincide with the rise in tornado numbers.
Interesting thoughts but, having grown up in small town Texas & Oklahoma in the 1950s, I'll raise a couple of subtle coutnerpoints. I know than the majority of people in the U.S. and around the world now, for the first time, live in urban areas. However, with the general increase in populations (since 1950 the U.S. has doubled, the world nearly tripled), I'm not at all sure that rural or small town populations have decreased. Of course many suburban towns would have once qualified as rural towns, complicating matters. I suspect that non-urban populations have actually increased, although farm populations have certainly diminished.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile lightning is certainly easy to see outdoors, especially at night, and regional thunder never goes unnoticed (except perhaps in the middle of the night), it usually does not leave long term evidence of its presence even if it strikes down to Earth, unless it produces a fire.
Tornadoes, on the other hand, are often difficult to see at night or when shrouded by rain, but if they touch down they usually leave plenty of evidence of their passing.
Since lightning rarely goes unnoticed but is generally only fatal if it strikes an individual, the rise in tornado reports is quite likely due to increased damage to even non-urban 'property improvements' and structures - damage that is now reported to insurance companies that might not have been reported in the past.
As a slightly relevant aside, I bought a used car about 2 years ago and was reassured that the 'car facts' service reported no accident damage. Later I discovered there had been some bodywork repairs - it turns out that only repairs paid by an insurance company are reported by Car Fax & other such services! Sometimes the actual facts are not as clear as they seem...
julianpenrod There is no increase in tornadoes since 1950 as you stated. There are more reports of tornadoes, because there are more people to see them and reporting is easy. 2012 will likely go down as the quietest tornado year on record. Study was led by Roger Pielke, Jr:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/20/tornado-damage/1644991/