U.S. Lightning Deaths, Injuries, and Damages in the 1890s Compared to 1990s

摘要

A six-fold reduction in the rate of lightning-caused deaths over the last centuryhas been determined in several previous studies. The reasons have been attributed to a number of factors, but none have been quantified in detail with a large dataset. For this reason, several thousand lightning-caused deaths, injuries, and reports of property damage in the United States were analyzed by manual extraction from an 1890s data source compared to recent data from the NOAA publication Storm Data. Results show that the decrease in lightning risk to people coincides with a shift in population from rural to urban regions. The major changes in the types of property damaged by lightning 100 years ago and today are also shown. The results identify changes in the types of incidents where people and objects are lightning victims. From this information, improved understanding can help in the development of better guidelines for lightning safety and education.