EP1 · Lightning
The global flash-density map: 133,725 half-degree cells of satellite-measured lightning, from the tropics' daily storms to the poles' silence.
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This map is not a storm feed. It is a climatology: two decades of satellite observation averaged into a single number for every half-degree cell on Earth, the mean flashes per square kilometre per year.
Lightning is made by tall, vigorous thunderstorms, and those need heat and rising air. Land warms far faster than sea, so the map lights up over the continents and goes dark over the open oceans.
Lightning kills more people in an average year than most single natural disasters, and its damage runs far beyond the direct strike.
Direct strikes are only the start. Lightning trips power grids and starts the faults that cascade into wider outages, and it is the dominant natural ignition source for wildfire, so a lightning map is also a map of where fire seasons begin.
For risk readers lightning is mostly an attritional peril, a steady drip of grid faults, aviation delays and building fires rather than a single headline catastrophe. The exposure sits squarely over the developing tropics, where the flashes are densest and the protection thinnest.