Virginia's lightning strikes are concentrated east of the Blue Ridge, in the southern Piedmont and Coastal Plain
Source: National Weather Service, Virginia Thunderstorms and Lightning, 1989
Virginia gets 35-45 thunderstorms a year, and most lightning is associated with those storms. Positive electrical charges accumulate on the small particles or ice and water that are lifted up into the tops of clouds; negative charges accumulate on the larger particles at the bottom of clouds.1 Hurricanes rarely generate lightning:
Lightning is an electric channel that rebalances the negative charges in the atmosphere with the positive charges from the ground. A lightning stroke starts with a negatively-charged "leader" stretching from the sky towards the ground. Once a positively-charged "streamer" from the ground links to the leader 100-300 feet above the ground, negative ions start down the leaders but are quickly overwhelmed by a surge of positively charged ions flowing up the streamer, in a return stroke from the ground to the sky. According to the National Weather Service:2
About 5% of lightning strikes are "positive," connecting the tops of the clouds with the ground. Such strikes can be the "bolt out of the blue," hitting the ground far from any obvious storm cloud. The occasional positive lightning strike is usually more powerful than the normal lightning bolt, and may be the cause of many electrical blackouts and forest fires.3
In 2011, lightning triggered the Lateral West Fire at Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. The fire burned over 6,000 acres. The standard approach for fighting fire at the refuge is to flood the swamp, pumping water into the ditches and drowning the fire. However, even the massive 12-inch rainfall from Hurricane Irene a month later could not penetrate the peat soil and completely extinguish the Lateral West Fire.
Lightning strikes people as well as power lines, trees and swamps. On average, 1-2 people in Virginia are killed by lightning each year, and most lightning deaths in the United States are "males between the ages of 20 and 40 years old who were caught outdoors on ballfields, near open water, or under trees."4
In 1968, while Governor Godwin was at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, his daughter was killed by a lightning strike at Camp Pendleton (the "Camp David" for Virginia's top officials, in the southern part of the City of Virginia Beach). One ranger at Shenandoah National Park, Roy Sullivan, holds an apparent world record for surviving seven separate lightning strikes between 1942 and 1977. He finally died in 1983, by suicide.5
1. "Virginia Thunderstorms and Lightning," National Weather Service, http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/lightning/va-lightning.htm; NASA, "Where ightning Strikes," http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast05dec_1/ (last checked September 18, 2011)
2. "A quick bolt of lightning can trigger blazes lasting months," The Virginian-Pilot, September 6, 2011, http://hamptonroads.com/node/613163 (last checked September 18, 2011)
3. "The Positive and Negative Side of Lightning," National Weather Service, a href="http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/positive.htm">http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/lightning/positive.htm (last checked September 18, 2011)
4. "Virginia Thunderstorms and Lightning," National Weather Service, http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/lightning/va-lightning.htm (last checked September 18, 2011)
5. "Shenandoah National Park Ranger Roy Sullivan Set the World Record for Being Hit by Lightning," National Parks Traveller, http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2008/08/shenandoah-national-park-ranger-roy-sullivan-set-world-record-being-hit-lightning (last checked September 18, 2011)
