Lightning Deaths In Tennessee Hit 12-Year High

NASHVILLE, TN -- In less than two months, three Tennesseans have died after a lightning strike. It's the first year since 2006 with more than one lightning death and exceeds the total number of deaths by lightning in the Volunteer State between 2007 and 2017.

Before May 29, when a 7-year-old Weakley County boy died when lightning struck a tree he was playing under, the last lightning strike death in Tennessee was in 2016. Since May 29, two other people have been killed: 75-year-old former Roane County school board member Everett Massengill in Kingston July 6 and Darrell Hoskins in Somerville July 14. Both Massengill and Hoskins were mowing the lawn when they were struck.

It's the most deaths by lightning strike in Tennessee in any year since at least 2006 when there were two, according to National Weather Service statistics.

Because lightning strikes are largely random, it's hard to ascribe any sort of pattern short of general increased thunderstorm activity and a longer look at the statistics indicate that 2018 is more or less an average year and the previous decade has actually been something of an aberration.

In the 59 years between 1959 and 2017, 141 Tennesseans died from lightning strikes, an average of 2.3 annually, working out to 0.5 deaths per million. Tennessee's population is 6.6 million.

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