[Table of Contents]
ABSTRACT
A six-fold reduction in the rate of lightning-caused deaths over the last century
has 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.
Next: Introduction