You've heard that lightning never strikes the same place twice. It does, constantly. Lightning is looking for the easiest path down to the ground, and a tall metal building is the easiest path around, so it gets hit again and again. The Empire State Building in New York is struck about twenty-three times every single year. That's why tall buildings wear a lightning rod on top, to catch all that power and send it safely into the ground. Slide the tower up in the simulator and watch the bolts pile onto it.
Most people think lightning never strikes the same place twice. In fact it loves a repeat: it follows the easiest path to ground, so tall conductive structures concentrate the field and get struck again and again, like the Empire State Building at about 23 times a year.
What's actually happening
It is one of those phrases everyone knows and almost nobody questions: lightning never strikes the same place twice. We use it as folk comfort, a way of saying that whatever went wrong is over and won't happen again. As a piece of weather science it is simply false, and not by a little. Lightning strikes the same places over and over, on purpose almost, because those places are exactly the ones that invite it.
A lightning strike is the discharge of an enormous charge difference between cloud and ground, and like all electricity it takes the path of least resistance. Tall, pointed, conductive objects shorten that path and concentrate the electric field at their tips, so they launch the upward "streamer" that reaches up to meet the descending bolt. Height and conductivity don't just allow repeat strikes, they recruit them. The simulator makes the point directly: raise the tower and the bolts crowd onto it while the open field beside it stays almost untouched. The taller and more conductive the thing, the larger the share of nearby strikes it grabs.
The real numbers are startling. The Empire State Building in New York is hit by lightning roughly twenty-three times a year, and has been struck several times within a single storm. Tall radio masts, skyscrapers and isolated trees all get repeat business. This is precisely why we invented the lightning rod: a tall conductor placed deliberately at the top of a structure, wired straight to the ground, so that when lightning comes (and it will come, again and again) it travels harmlessly down the metal instead of through the building. The proverb has it backwards. If you want to never be struck twice, the last thing to be is tall and made of metal.
Height plus conductivity does not avoid lightning, it collects it, which is precisely why we put grounded rods on top of tall buildings.
- 1In the simulator, drag the tower down to its shortest and let the storm run — strikes scatter, and the open field catches a fair few.
- 2Now raise the tower to full height and watch again: almost every bolt swerves onto the rod at the top, and the strike counter on the tower climbs fast.
- 3You just reproduced the Empire State Building. Tall plus conductive doesn't avoid lightning, it collects it.
Common questions
Tall, pointed, conductive objects shorten the path to ground and concentrate the electric field at their tips, launching the upward streamer that meets the descending bolt. Height and conductivity do not just allow repeat strikes, they recruit them.
It is a tall conductor placed deliberately at the top of a structure and wired straight to the ground. When lightning comes, and it will come again and again, the bolt travels harmlessly down the metal instead of through the building.
Yes. US park ranger Roy Sullivan survived seven separate strikes between 1942 and 1977, a Guinness record. His job kept him outdoors in storms, exactly the wrong place, repeatedly.