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Data

Fatality rates due to lightning in the US

About this data

Source
Various sources (2017) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 22, 2017
Date range
1900–2015
Unit
Percent

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Various sources – Weather fatality rates in the US

Data on the annual fatalities (since 1940) to various weather events in the US is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service. Data on lightning fatalities earlier than 1991 is not from this NOAA dataset, but from the Lopez and Holle paper cited below.

The fatality rate is calculated based on the NOAA fatality counts and estimates of the US population. These estimates are based on US census data for the period before 1960 and on World Bank data for the period since then.

Data on the lightning fatality rate until 1990 is from Raúl E. Lopez and Ronald L. Holle (1997) — Changes in the Number of Lightning Deaths in the United States during the Twentieth Century. Journal of Climate; Volume 11. This fatality rate is not calculated for the entire US since in earlier periods not all US states reported the number of annual fatalities. (In the calculation of the fatality rate, Lopez and Holle have taken only the population of the reporting states into account so that the population in the numerator and the denominator refer to the same group of people.)

Retrieved on
April 22, 2017
Retrieved from
https://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/victims.shtml
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Our World in Data based on NOAA, Lopez and Holle (1997), and population data from the US Census Bureau and the World Bank.

Data on the annual fatalities (since 1940) to various weather events in the US is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service. Data on lightning fatalities earlier than 1991 is not from this NOAA dataset, but from the Lopez and Holle paper cited below.

The fatality rate is calculated based on the NOAA fatality counts and estimates of the US population. These estimates are based on US census data for the period before 1960 and on World Bank data for the period since then.

Data on the lightning fatality rate until 1990 is from Raúl E. Lopez and Ronald L. Holle (1997) — Changes in the Number of Lightning Deaths in the United States during the Twentieth Century. Journal of Climate; Volume 11. This fatality rate is not calculated for the entire US since in earlier periods not all US states reported the number of annual fatalities. (In the calculation of the fatality rate, Lopez and Holle have taken only the population of the reporting states into account so that the population in the numerator and the denominator refer to the same group of people.)

Retrieved on
April 22, 2017
Retrieved from
https://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/victims.shtml
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Our World in Data based on NOAA, Lopez and Holle (1997), and population data from the US Census Bureau and the World Bank.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Fatality rates due to lightning in the US”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Various sources. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Various sources (2017) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Various sources (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Fatality rates due to lightning in the US” [dataset]. Various sources, “Weather fatality rates in the US” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-due-to-lightning-in-the-us.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear