After a nine year survey, the University of Washington have published a paper demonstrating how superbolts are most common in the Mediterranean Sea, the northeast Atlantic and over the Andes, with lesser hotspots east of Japan, in the tropical oceans and off the tip of South Africa. Unlike regular lightning, the superbolts tend to strike over water and outside of the normal lightning season.

Published 5 years ago

The study was published Sept. 9 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Robert Holzworth, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, manages the World Wide Lightning Location Network which has been running approx. 100 lightning detection stations around the world, from Antarctica to northern Finland since the early 2000s. During an eight-year period (from 2010-2018) they recorded over 2 billion lightning strikes of which 8000 were superbolts.

Areas, where these superbolts are more likely to occur that affect cruising sailors, are in the Mediterranean and northeast Atlantic, east of Japan, in the tropical oceans and off the tip of South Africa.

High season for these powerful strikes of lightening begins in just a couple of months, from November to February. They emit a thousand times more energy than a normal bolt of lightning.

Find out more at the University of Washington News.

Further Reading:

Map of lightning superbolts around the world

Lightning over the Ocean – Ocean Navigator

Learning about Lightning – All at Sea

Considerations for marine lightning protection

Lightning Never Strikes Twice! – yacht Pipistrelle

Noonsite has not independently verified this information.