The old saying that ‘lightning never strikes the same place twice’ is a myth that any veteran storm observer or researcher has seen nature defy. Lightning can strike any location more than once. In fact, given enough time, it is actually inevitable. It may take as little as less than 10 minutes within a single thunderstorm, or longer than a million years - but lightning will eventually strike the same spot again and again. A strike to any location does nothing to change the electrical activity in the storm above, which will produce another strike as soon as it ‘recharges’. The previously hit location is then just as fair game for the next discharge as any other spot.

Tall television towers and large skyscrapers are the most common places that lightning strikes recurrently. A television tower or tall skyscraper often experiences a direct strike as frequently as every 30 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. An observer wishing to witness a predictable close lightning strike has to go no further than his local television tower during a storm. 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.

Besides, a lightning strike is actually composed of several different strikes travelling over the same path. So technically one strike is several. To put another spin on ‘lightning strikes twice,’ NASA also released a document in 2003 pointing out that the same lightning strike often strikes two, or even three places. In fact, the average strike hits 1.45 places on earth. So, the next time you are asked if lightning can strike the same place twice, respond with ‘lightning does not care’.