Thread by @lymanstoneky

Here's the global distribution of lightning strikes.

Absolutely insane amount of lightning in the DRC. Half the country averages >45 lightning flashes per square km per year.

That's an average of 2-3 times as much lightning as we get in America and 5-20x as much as in Europe!

Googled this image because I was watching @LucaMPesando present a paper that used this data as an instrument for "how much of a pain is it to maintain a cell phone network" which has to be one of the cooler instrumental variables.

Here's another one. But I'd really like one that doesn't use a log scale for colors and also doesn't change the colors. Just use one color, scaled linearly.