ABSTRACT
Hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage are attributed to lightning strikes every year in the US. Thunderstorms are the single most destructive threat to maintaining uninterrupted service to power utility customers. Lightning and electrical clouds pose a severe hazard for NASA space launches as evidenced by direct lightning strikes which damaged the Apollo 12 moon flight and destroyed an unmanned Atlas-Centaur rocket in 1987. Long-term projects exist to develop a lightning ground strike database for the entire US.
