Facts

Lightning is a form of electrical discharge between clouds or between a cloud and the ground.

Lightning reaches 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, fours times as hot as the sun's surface.

The average lightning strike is 6 miles long.

Voltage in a cloud-to-ground strike is 100 million to 1 billion volts.

Americans are twice as likely to die from lightning than from a hurricane, tornado or flood.

20% of all lightning victims die from the strike. 70% of survivors will suffer serious long-term effects.

There are over 8,000,000 lightning strikes a day worldwide.

There are more than 10,000 forest fires caused by lightning a year.

Information gathered from StrikeAlert