Shocking Reaction as Fayette Co. Town Crowned US Lightning Capital

A recent report by Vaisala, a company that specializes in lightning detection systems, named Flatonia as the “U.S. Lightning Capital” for 2021.

The company made its findings by mapping the location of lightning strikes across the country and determining the density of lightning strikes per square mile. The report said the Flatonia area experienced 1,043 lightning strikes per square mile in 2021. Flatonia beat the second-place city – Geneva, Florida – by nearly 200 bolts.

This came as news to a lot of folks around Flatonia.

“That’s weird, who put that out?” said Flatonia Fire Chief John Burleson when the Record asked him about the report.

Burleson recalled a fire two years ago involving a crude oil tank that got struck by lightning. He couldn’t remember any lightning-related fires in the past year around Flatonia.

“It seems like La Grange gets more of those than we do,” Burleson said.

High school sporting events sometimes get postponed due to lightning. But Flatonia ISD Athletic Director Chris Freytag said lightning barely affected sports last year.

“During football season, we had maybe one or two lightningdelayed practices from August to November,” he said. “But they weren’t canceled because we waited 30 minutes and the lightning passed.”

He said lightning storms in the spring usually affect baseball season more than any other sport. However, Freytag couldn’t recall any of the Bulldogs baseball games at home last spring that were delayed or canceled due to lightning.

“We’ve had a pretty successful year at not having sporting events affected by lightning,” he said. “That’s almost rare, because where we’re at in Texas, especially in the spring dur-ing baseball season, we usually have some lightning delays. But I can’t remember any of our games getting canceled or postponed because of lightning last year.”

“It is interesting to be known as the U.S. Lightning Capital,” Freytag added. “We’ll take whatever we can get in Flatonia, I guess.”