Raise the Bar: Where Lightning Strikes on Earth

Sixteen years of lightning seen from space on one map. Raise the bar: at 50 flashes per square kilometre a year mostly Africa is left, at 200 just two places, and the brightest is not on land.

By Coru · Published 2026-11-05 · Updated 2026-11-05

Your lightning map

Move the threshold slider or press 10, 50, 100 or 200 and watch what is left on the map. Without scripts there is a table of thresholds below and the whole map as a picture.

What is left at each threshold

Cells are the 0.1° squares of the satellite grid between 38°S and 38°N; thresholds are flashes per km² a year. Names are the nearest populated places from the hotspot table of Albrecht et al. 2016.

Threshold	Cells	Area	Last places standing
10	295,557	34.6 million km²	Among them: Lake Maracaibo, Kabare, Kampene, Cáceres, Sake…
50	8,880	1.1 million km²	Among them: Lake Maracaibo, Kabare, Kampene, Cáceres, Sake…
100	409	49,899 km²	Among them: Lake Maracaibo, Kabare, Kampene, Cáceres, Sake…
200	4	489 km²	Last standing: Lake Maracaibo, Kabare.

What you are looking at

This is sixteen years of lightning, seen from space. The LIS sensor on the TRMM satellite counted flashes from 1998 to 2013 in the band between 38°S and 38°N, in cells of 0.1°. Towards the poles the LIS/OTD climatology fills in with 0.5° cells: beyond 38° it holds only the OTD sensor's observations of 1995 to 2000.

Now look at the oceans. Almost dark. Per square kilometre, land gets about ten times more lightning than the sea.

World map: lightning density from NASA satellite data 1998–2013 on a dark background, from violet through orange to white; Central Africa, northern South America and South Asia are brightest, the oceans almost dark. A colour scale with the marks 1, 10 and 100 sits at the bottom left. — The whole map at once: flashes per square kilometre a year, from 0.1 to 300, coloured on a logarithmic scale. The marks on the scale are 1, 10 and 100. Image credit: Coru; data: NASA GHRC DAAC. Original Coru rendering of NASA open data (LIS VHRFC, LIS/OTD HRFC; CC0) and Natural Earth; NASA does not endorse this page.

Why land

Lightning needs a strong updraft. Sunlit land heats up fast, and hot air shoots up for kilometres, where ice crystals and soft hail, graupel, collide and split the charge.

The sea warms slowly. Its storms rise gently and spark far less.

Raise the bar

Fifty flashes per square kilometre a year: 8,880 cells are left on the map, mostly Africa. Of the 500 top lightning hotspots on the planet, 283 are in Africa. One hundred: 409 cells. Two hundred: four cells.

Two places are left. One in eastern DR Congo, near Kabare: 205 flashes per square kilometre a year. And the brightest of all is not on land.

It's a lake. Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela: about 233 flashes per square kilometre a year, 232.5 in the cell at 9.75°N, 71.65°W.

Why the lake

The lake lies between the most northern ridges of the Andes, and its water is warm all year, 28 to 31 °C. At night, breezes slide down the Andes and in from the shore, and collide over the warm water. The air can only go up.

Storms break out on about 297 nights a year. Lightning avoids the sea. But it loves this lake.

How to read the map

The map is a grid of 0.25° cells. Inside the satellite's band each cell holds the highest value of the 0.1° cells that fall into it, so a place goes dark exactly when its last cell drops under the bar. The threshold runs from 0.1 to 300 flashes per square kilometre a year in 96 equal logarithmic steps of about 9 % each; 10, 50, 100 and 200 are placed exactly. The cells and area left at each threshold are counted on the original 0.1° grid between 38°S and 38°N; the names of the last places are the nearest populated places from the table of 500 hotspots in Albrecht et al. 2016.

Tap the map to read the value at a point. The Share button passes on only the slider position. The page stores and sends nothing.

Data: NASA TRMM Lightning Imaging Sensor, LIS 0.1° VHRFC (Albrecht et al. 2016), doi:10.5067/LIS/LIS/DATA301; beyond 38°: LIS/OTD 0.5° HRFC (Cecil 2001), doi:10.5067/LIS/LIS-OTD/DATA302; NASA Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center DAAC. Land from Natural Earth. NASA took no part in this page and does not endorse it.