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Indian Monsoon Hurls Almost 37,000 Lightning Bolts

India’s monsoon season began with almost 37,000 bolts flashed in the sky or slammed in the ground in just 13 hours.

Indian Monsoon Hurls Almost 37,000 Lightning Bolts
Lightning strikes in a rural area. (Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- India’s monsoon season began with an extraordinary outburst of lightning Wednesday, as almost 37,000 bolts flashed across the sky or slammed into the ground in just 13 hours, the meteorological instrument maker Vaisala Inc. said, citing Indian officials.

Lightning from powerful spring storms that wash across India and neighboring Bangladesh pose a great risk to farmers, said Ron Holle, a Vaisala meteorologist at the company’s lightning center in Tucson, Arizona. The most dangerous storms come in May.

Vaisala’s network tracks about 6 million strikes around the globe each day and about 2 billion annually, Holle said. Other hot spots for lightning include the southern and central U.S., the northern coast of Australia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Columbia, Sumatra, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan, Will Wade

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.