3 million lightning strikes in Indiana for 2023, wind farms one of the top targets nationally

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Severe weather was a story for many nationally last year. A newly released report by the Vaisala U.S. National Lightning Detection Network tallied all of the lightning strikes across the U.S. in 2023, including in-cloud lightning and cloud-to-ground lightning.

Headlines

In an analysis, wind farms were found to be at a greater risk of lightning damage. The study states that “77,494 lightning strokes at or near 1,500 wind farms in the United States in 2023.” Surprisingly, two wind farms had over 1,000 lightning strikes each. Damages were reportedly over $100 million for wind farms.

The Miami-Ft Lauderdale area was the most lightning-prone U.S. metropolitan area in 2023 with over 120 thousand strikes.

Statistics

Texas had the most lightning strikes of any state last year with 42.8 million strikes. Indiana ranked 21st in this category with over 3 million lightning strikes statewide. Florida ranked number one in terms of lightning density.

Five of the top 10 days for lightning bolts in the U.S. occurred June 14-21. Locally, central Indiana had multiple severe weather events to close the month of June. A derecho impacted our area on June 29, and a few days earlier on June 25, very large hail was picked up in Kirklin, Indiana.

This lightning data comes from the Vaisala U.S. National Lightning Detection Network, an organization regarded as one of the best lightning detection networks in the world.