Its not really news that this area gets pegged with a whole mess of thunderstorms. It doesn’t matter the time of year, either. January? Yup. July? Totally. October? You bet. March? Definitely.
So, it is no surprise that when looking at the total number of lightning strikes, between 2015 and 2019, across the three different NWS offices in the area, that the total number of lightning strikes is very high.
How high? It totaled nearly 100 million.
Lotta Lightning
Yes. Ninety-six million, seven-hundred-and-thirty thousand, six-hundred and ninety-two strikes. That is a combination of in-cloud and cloud-to-ground strikes. Most of the strikes, according to Vaisala, occurred across southeastern Louisiana. But plenty during that time period occurred across Mississippi and Alabama, too.
It is kind of neat to try and deduce a pattern from all of the chaos on the map above. A few quick questions pop into my head. Like, “Why is the number of lightning strikes lower in Pearl River County than the counties and Parishes to the west and east?” or “Why is southern Jones County a hot spot?” and “Why is the west side of Mobile bay more electric than the east side?”
Zooming out, the Gulf Coast is is in a race for the top region. Along with the Florida peninsula and east Texas.
Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist for Vaisala, and someone I would call a “lightning specialist” tweeted out a whole list of cool lightning images for across the country. This was the first tweet in a long thread of tweets.
For the Southern MS/AL/LA region
I asked him to produce a map for just our area. He sent it over and included an extra year of data. So, the map below features data from 2015 through 2020. And the map shows the lightning density per year.
So a quick way to read this would be “For every square kilometer, how many lightning bolts will you see?” And the average looks to line up between about 50 and 125 lightning bolts per year per square kilometer.
This does include a monster of a strike that Vagasky told us about back on Easter Sunday in 2020.
Higher totals in Louisiana, lower totals up around I-20, Then a stripe of higher totals from the Mississippi coast up through Stone, George, Greene, and Choctaw counties. With a little bulls-eye in Jones county.
And if you sit back and think about how many times lightning strikes within about 3/4 of a mile of your house, that probably holds up.
Answering Those Questions
I can’t. At least not right now. But I’m going to think about these and look into some answers. Anyone want to add a question to this list? Let me know in the comment section below!
— Why is the number of lightning strikes lower in Pearl River County than the counties and Parishes to the west and east?
— Why is southern Jones County a hot spot?
— Why is the west side of Mobile bay more electric than the east side?”
