Here's where lightning is most likely to strike twice

(Image credit: Twitter/Popular Science)

published 6 April 2015

A new satellite map from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and OrbView-1/Microlab reveals where lightning most often flashes across the globe. If you live close to the equator, you may want to invest in home insurance.

The map uses data collected from 1998 to 2013 based on the number and location of lightning flashes. The flashes are more common near the equator, and lightning tends to flash over land more often than over the ocean, Discovery News reports. Land absorbs sunlight more quickly than water, which creates stronger convection and higher levels of atmospheric instability, causing lightning-producing storms, NASA explains.

On the map above, which shows the average yearly counts of lightning flashes per square kilometer, the areas with the most lightning flashes are pink, and the areas with the least lightning flashes are gray and purple. The winners (or losers) of the research are the Lake Maracaibo area of northwestern Venezuela, which sees lightning storms 300 nights a year, and the far eastern area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.