Estimates differ as to how likely it is that a person will be struck by lightning in a given year. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the odds at about 1 in 500,000. The Weather Service, citing data from 2009 to 2018, puts them at 1 in 1.2 million.
A lightning strike can cause cardiac arrest when it hits, according to the Weather Service, which also notes that some victims “may appear to have a delayed death a few days later” if they are resuscitated but have sustained irreversible brain damage.
Only about one in 10 people who are hit by lightning die; the rest sustain injuries of varying severity while surviving to tell harrowing tales.
Still, lightning is among the leading causes of weather-related death in the United States. From 1989 to 2018, the country averaged 43 reported lightning deaths a year, the Weather Service says. From 2009 to 2018, the figure dropped to 27.
As of Aug. 3, lightning had killed six people in the country this year, Weather Service data shows. The first death was in New Jersey in June, when a 70-year-old man was struck on a golf course. Of the others, one was on a golf course, three were at beaches and one was on a hiking trail.
Before Thursday, lightning had injured 17 people in New York City since 2001, federal storm data shows. One day in August 2018, for instance, three men were struck by lightning and injured, one critically, in Queens. Two were playing soccer in Flushing Meadows Corona Park; the third was standing next to a vehicle at an intersection in Jamaica.
A lightning strike was last known to have killed someone in the city in August 2002, when a 25-year-old man went to the roof of a building on Broome Street in Manhattan to watch thunderstorms, according to the federal storm data.
The man’s girlfriend, who was knocked out by the lightning, later told The New York Times that he “wanted to see the storm come in, to see how beautiful it was.”
