
If the distribution of lightning across Washington D.C. Number of CG flashes and average CG flash density for Washington D.C., 2010-2019 The average flash density for Washington D.C. averaged 557 CG flashes per year between 20. Looking at the NLDN archives, Washington D.C. CG flashes consist of one or more CG strokes within 10 kilometers and 500 meters. In answering this question, I am limiting my search to CG flashes between Januand June 6, 2020. How often is the Washington Monument struck? Lightning that strikes tall towers helps our scientists and engineers validate the performance of NLDN and Global Lightning Dataset GLD360. In this instance, NLDN detected one stroke 90 meters and one stroke 130 meters from the monument, both quite accurate locations. The median location accuracy of NLDN is better than 150 meters, which is the best network accuracy across the contiguous United States. The location accuracy can be affected by how the lightning sensors are distributed throughout the network and how lightning waves travel across the ground. So why aren’t the detected lightning strokes right on top of the Washington Monument? One of the metrics that lightning detection networks focus on is their location accuracy, which tells how close to the actual lightning event the network located the lightning. The Washington Monument is circled in black. Figure 1: The two CG lightning strokes (red squares) detected by National Lightning Detection Network just after 8.35 pm Eastern Daylight Time on June 4. On June 4, NLDN detected both CG strokes just after 8.35 pm Eastern Daylight Time. NLDN detects the individual CG lightning strokes and in-cloud lightning pulses. Multiple lightning strokes in rapid succession are why lightning appears to flicker when you watch a thunderstorm.

In re-watching the video, the Washington Monument appears to be hit by two cloud-to-ground (CG) strokes from the same lightning flash.

After the monument was struck on Thursday evening, I shared some of our National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) data from the event, but we wanted to go a little deeper into the event and answer the question on everybody’s mind: how often is the monument struck by lightning? Standing at 555 feet (169 meters) tall, the marble monument built to honor the United States of America’s first president George Washington, is the tallest structure in Washington, D.C. The Washington Monument is one of more than 100 monuments and memorials that make up the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, D.C., USA. It probably comes as no surprise that those of us at Vaisala made up more than a handful of the more than 11 million views of the Washington Monument being struck by lightning on June 4.
