Environment
Where in the U.S. You're Most Likely to Get Struck by Lightning
A county-by-county look.
One moment you're strolling across the golf course, pointing a 9 iron at a funny-looking cloud. The next your body is wracked with the searing pain of 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit and you've got the beginnings of a weird scar shaped like a fractal.
Such is the lightningophobe's nightmare, and statistically speaking, lightning-on-human violence has grouped in certain areas of the country more than others. Geography also plays a role in where lightning causes property damage and where bolt-throwing storms lay waste to crops – and all this collective misery is now on display in the Google Maps Gallery's "Lightning Spatial Hazard Events and Losses for the United States, 1995-2009."