Lightning Strikes
Most people are indoors during storms. Outdoor workers and recreationalists face dramatically higher risk.
Calculate Your Risk
The misleading stat
~20 deaths per year in the US
(global average, including people never exposed)
vs
Your actual annual risk
1 in 1,666,667
(0.0001% chance per year)
For comparison
- Car crash (US annual): 1 in 8,000
- Coconut (1hr/day exposure): 1 in 64,000
Methodology & sources
This calculator multiplies chained probabilities:
- Lightning in your area: 1e-7 — Site estimate, back-calculated from the death toll: ~20 US deaths/year ÷ 10% fatality = ~200 strikes/year. Assuming ~30 million Americans spend ~60 hours/year outdoors in thunderstorm conditions (1.8 billion person-hours), that is ~1 strike per 10 million exposed hours.
- Hours outdoors in storms
- Storm days per year
- Fatal outcome: 0.1 — NWS: about 10% of people struck by lightning are killed, 90% survive with varying disability (weather.gov/safety/lightning-odds)