Some Interesting Lightning Facts

Written by Colin Sanders Wednesday, 23 November 2011

At CJS Eastern we collect a lot of interesting information when we perform our lightning risk assessments around the country.

We thought it would be a good idea to share this with you so you can see just how important it is to ensure that you have a risk assessment of your lightning conductors & lightning protection systems undertaken by a fully qualified CSCS & NVQ qualified firm.

• At any time there are over 2,000 thunderstorms occurring around the world, each producing over a 100 lightning strikes every second. Thats over 8 million lightning bolts hitting the ground every day.

• Over 24,000 people fall victim to lightning each year. Equatorial Africa is most affected — on one occasion all 11 members of a football team were killed by a single bolt of lightning. The opposing team were uninjured. The final score of the game is not known.

• A lightning strike discharges about 1-10 billion joules of energy and produces a current of some 30,000 - 50,000 amps, which heats the surrounding air to over 20,000 degrees Celsius.

• A single lightning bolt unleashes as much energy as blowing up a ton of TNT.

• A strike is actually made up of between three and twelve individual lightning 'strokes', each lasting only a few thousandths of a second.