“Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

Can lightning strike the same place twice? Lightning does hit the same spot (or almost the same spot) more than once, contrary to folk wisdom. Taller objects are more likely than shorter objects to produce the upward channel.

Lightning may hit the same place or person several times. Ray Sullivan, a retired National Park Ranger, was hit 7 times!

In general, the taller the object, the more often it is struck. For example, a 30‑m tower located in Florida is struck by lightning, on average, once in 3 to 4 years, while a 60‑m tower is struck on average once every year. If the object is very tall, such object‑initiated lightning may occur literally dozens of times every thunderstorm season. For example, the Ostankino TV tower in Moscow, Russia, which is 540 m high, experiences about 30 lightning strikes per year. In summary, from the lightning standpoint, the saying "lightning never strikes the same place twice" is certainly not true. It does strike its preferential targets such as tall towers over and over again.

Yes. Lightning can strike the same place twice. In fact, lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly, especially a tall, pointy, isolated object. For example, the Empire State Building is hit by lightning about 25 times a year.

Myth: Lightning never strikes twice in the same place! Fact: It has been well documented that lightning may strike certain objects frequently.

Contrary to popular misconception, lightning often strikes the same place twice. Certain conditions are just ripe for a bolt of electricity to come zapping down; and a lightning strike is powerful enough to do a lot of damage wherever it hits.

Tower height is positively correlated with CG occurrence; towers taller than 400 m above ground level experience a median increase of 150% in CG lightning density compared to a region 2 km to 5 km away. Tower height is correlated with lightning occurrence with towers ≥500 m tall having a median frequency … CG frequency was positively correlated with tower height with 98.2% of matching towers having a height ≥200 m.

The answer: FALSE. Lightning can strike the same place twice. It happens multiple places, multiple times per year. Especially tall objects like towers can be struck multiple times, even within one storm.

There are no safe places outside in a thunderstorm. If you hear thunder, the storm is already close enough that lightning could strike you and you need to get to shelter immediately.

Fact: Lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly, especially if it's a tall, pointy, isolated object. The Empire State Building is hit an average of 23 times a year.

Conversely, the idea that lightning never strikes the same location twice is false. According to the National Weather Service, lightning can and frequently does hit the same spot multiple times, particularly if it is a tall, pointed structure.

The old saying “lightning never strikes twice in the same place” couldn't be more wrong, at least taken literally. At Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela there are 1.2 million lightning strikes a year, but even in more usual places it is common for there to be two or more lightning strikes that follow the same route to the ground within seconds of each other. It turns out, the negative charges inside a thundercloud are not discharged all in a single flash, but are partly stored alongside the main channel at various breaks, and can trigger a second strike. The remaining negative charge can be discharged shortly afterward in a second strike, reusing the same channel.

A television tower or tall skyscraper often experiences a direct strike as frequently as every thirty seconds during more intense thunderstorms, with a total of three to over a dozen strikes per every half‑hour interval that a storm is overhead. Towers or skyscrapers that reach or exceed the 1,000 foot mark are virtually guaranteed to take at least one direct hit during every thunderstorm that passes overhead. Based on our observations and collected images of actual tower/skyscraper strikes, a structure in the midwestern and northeastern USA with a height over 1,500 feet AGL receives an average of between 2 and 6 strikes during each thunderstorm that passes directly over the structure… we can conclude that these structures receive an estimated 40 to 90 strikes per year, with anomalous years likely producing no more than 125.

The fact is that lightning can and does strike the same place twice. The antenna on the Empire State Building is hit at least 25 times a year, according to esbnyc.com.

In reality, lightning can and will strike the same place twice, whether it be during the same storm or even centuries later. Even during the same thunderstorm, there is nothing stopping a lightning bolt from striking the same place it had struck previously, even if it was as little as a few seconds earlier or as much as centuries later. This makes the likelihood of a place being struck by lightning multiple times incredibly high over a long period of time.

We've known for some time that the old adage about the repeat performance of lightning is not, in fact, true. The powerful bolts of electricity from the sky can, and frequently do, make contact with Earth in the same place more than once. "The expression 'lightning never strikes twice' is questioned in this paper because it shows that some spots are hit even more than twice: year after year," the researchers write in their paper.

People say that lightning never strikes the same place twice – but the idea is completely wrong, it turns out. In fact, lightning frequently strikes exactly the same place twice, due to lightning travelling along ‘channels’ that are reused, scientists have said. They found that lightning strikes the same place twice due to ‘needles’ up to 100 metres in length, which extend out from positively charged lightning channels.

Lightning, it turns out, can strike multiple times in the same place. What the researchers found when they recalibrated the telescope to study the atmosphere were so-called "needles" that store negative charge in a main lightning channel. Sometimes, not all of the charge is released in one flash, allowing for multiple lightning bolts. “Through these needles, a negative charge may cause a repeated discharge to the ground," he said.

Lightning really does strike more than twice. NASA-funded scientists have recently learned that cloud-to-ground lightning frequently strikes the ground in two or more places and that the chances of being struck are about 45 percent higher than what people commonly assume. They found that within their sample of 386 flashes, 136 flashes (35 percent) struck the ground in two or more places that were separated by tens of meters or more. There were a total of 558 different strike points; therefore, on average, each cloud-to-ground flash struck the ground in 1.45 places.

Recent advancements in lightning research and sophisticated detection systems have uncovered an intriguing truth: certain areas are struck by lightning repeatedly, sometimes dozens or even hundreds of times each year. For example, the Empire State Building experiences lightning strikes around 20 to 25 times annually, making it one of the most frequently hit buildings globally. Remarkably, during a single storm, it was struck eight times within just 24 minutes, showcasing how lightning can target the same site multiple times in a short span. One World Center in New York City, towering at 1,776 feet, was struck 189 times from 2015 to 2020. Similarly, the Willis Tower in Chicago recorded 250 lightning strikes during the same period.

But unfortunately, it's not a very good idiom, because it's not true. Lightning is very good at striking the same place twice – you could even say that it's a special skill of lightning to hit the same place two (or even more!) times. One famous example of two lightning strikes in the same spot in quick succession took place on Nov. 14, 1969, when the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo 12 mission was struck twice, only 16 seconds apart just after takeoff.

There’s an old saying that lightning never strikes in the same place twice — which, in reality, is woefully incorrect. Lightning frequently does strike the same area more than once (try 100+ strokes for buildings like One World Trade Center!). Tall, isolated structures also unfortunately include radio and television broadcasting towers—some of the tallest structures in the United States—which stand alone in big open fields and experience several direct lightning strikes a year. In 2023, the Perry Broadcasting Tower was struck by 29 cloud‑to‑ground flashes over eight different months.

Yet bolts from the blue not only hit the same places with regularity, but successive discharges often reuse the exact same channel. It's never been entirely clear how the path laid down by one bolt sticks around for repeat performances, but new research has discovered lingering pockets of charge in the wake of a single lightning strike, which could provide a map for more to follow. "From these observations, we see that a part of the cloud is re-charged, and we can understand why a lightning discharge to the ground may repeat itself a few times," says Hare.

You’ve probably heard the old saying: “lightning never strikes the same place twice.” However, this common phrase is a myth. Lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly—especially tall, pointy, and isolated objects. According to NOAA, the Empire State Building is hit approximately 23 times a year.

We have now conclusively demonstrated that lightning does strike the same place twice. In fact, lightning strikes cluster, and these clusters are somewhat consistent over time.

"Myth" – Lightning never strikes the same place twice. "Reality" – It can hit the same spot multiple times, and that's common! It is often said that lightning never strikes the same place twice. This expression has entered common parlance, but from a scientific point of view, it is completely false. No, lightning doesn't choose its targets only once. It strikes where physics dictates, again and again.

Lightning can strike twice in the same place! There is an old saying that lightning can never strike in the same place twice, used as a metaphor for bad things only happening once to anybody. But scientifically speaking, lightning does occur at the same spot multiple times and can strike twice. Firstly, during a lightning strike, there are multiple bolts of electricity. So, there are already numerous lightning strokes in the same place at one event.

Lightning does not remember where it has been, but it does respond predictably to physical conditions. Height, pointy shape, and isolation are the dominant factors controlling where a lightning bolt will strike, and natural objects that are tall and isolated, but made of little to no metal, like trees and mountains, get struck many times a year. The Empire State Building is hit an average of 23 times a year, according to the National Weather Service. The distinction for most frequently struck building in the country actually goes to the Willis Tower in Chicago, which was hit with 250 lightning strikes between 2015 and 2020. One World Trade Center came in second with 189 strikes between 2015 and 2020. The CN Tower in Toronto averages about 75 strikes per year.

Tall buildings, mountains, and even people have been struck multiple times. Science and real-world evidence prove that lightning is far from a one-time visitor. Lightning often strikes the same spot multiple times. It’s not a one-and-done phenomenon. In fact, some places get struck several times a year. Their findings confirm what scientists have known for a long time—lightning has no memory. It doesn’t avoid places it has struck before. If the conditions are right, it will strike the same place over and over again.

Lightning often strikes same‑place targets that meet certain criteria. For example, the Washington Monument is struck between one and five times per year on average. It is estimated there are between five and six lightning strikes on the Eiffel Tower each year. The Empire State Building in New York City is struck about 25 times a year. The higher that an object is in the sky, the closer it is to the source of electricity and the more prone it is to being struck. So tall objects like TV antennas, wind turbines, or large buildings can be struck more frequently than others.

Also notably, the Empire State Building in New York City is struck by lightning on average 23 times each year, and was once struck 8 times in 24 minutes.