According to a recent article in USA Today, the hotspot for lightning in the United States is located in Orangetree, Florida, a few miles southeast of Fort Myers on the southwest coast of the peninsula. This is based on a new satellite study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Globally, the most active area is Lake Maracaibo in northwest Venezuela, which gets 600 lightning strokes per square mile per year and has 300 days with thunderstorms on average.
If you need an archive of lightning information for insurance claims, you may be able to use https://www.lightningmaps.org/blitzortung/america/index.php?bo_page=archive&lang=en to identify areas with lightning. The only thing I don’t like about this map is that it does not allow you to zoom, or at least I have not figured out how to do it if it does, although you can zoom nicely if you use their real-time maps. Below is a screenshot of this morning’s lightning in Texas associated with the continuing rain and flooding there.
Since we are moving into the summer, with more frequent lightning, make sure you know your lightning safety tips. The National Weather Service has some great information at https://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/.
