Small Southern Indiana Town is the State's Lightning Capital

The weather just can't seem to make up its mind in 2025. So far this year, we have seen a little bit of everything - snow, ice, rain, hail, tornados, thunder, and lightning. It's that last item I want to focus on for a minute - Mother Nature's magnificent light show! I should probably turn to the experts for this one.

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Vaisala, a company that specializes in meteorological instrumentation, specifically equipment that detects lightning, recently released its Annual Lightning Report. The report includes 20 pages full of lightning-related statistics. For example...

There were more than 2.2 billion lightning events detected around the world in 2024
There were more than 209 million lightning events detected in the United States in 2024

The report also includes a list of each U.S. state's lightning capital, defined as...

The city or town in each state that saw the most lightning in 2024. The table shows lightning density, which is the number of lightning events per km² for each capital.

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I don't know what that means, but I can read the chart, and it says that Mt. Vernon, IN is the Hoosier state's lightning capital, with a density of 146. Again, I don't know what that means, but I know that it is way less than Teague, TX, which has a lightning density of 735, far and away the highest in America. See the chart below for the rest of the country's lightning capitals.

Vaisala Xweather Lightning Report

Keep in mind that this report is for lightning in 2024 - it'll be interesting to see which Hoosier city gets the most lightning in 2025. Based on the map below, which shows total lightning density throughout the country, I would imagine that the lightning capital will once again be somewhere here in Southern Indiana.

Vaisala Xweather Lightning Report

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Gallery Credit: KATELYN LEBOFF