Lightning is one of nature's most spectacular displays, but it is far from understood.
Lightning is the most frequent weather threat to personal safety during the thunderstorm season.
If people knew more about the dangers of lightning, practiced safety, and used common sense before, during, and after thunderstorms, lightning fatalities and injuries could be reduced. As a safety threat, lightning receives less attention than other dangerous weather phenomenon such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods. Table I lists lightning and other storm-related fatalities by decade. Because other dangerous weather phenomenon such as tornadoes, hurricanes and flash floods often result in multiple fatalities and great destruction of property, they make headlines. Since lightning usually takes its victims one at a time, the threat of lightning is not given the attention, nor the respect, it deserves.