“Lightning never strikes the same place twice” is a comforting saying and a completely false one — tall structures get hit again and again, and the Empire State Building alone is struck around twenty-five times a year

The lightning rod on top of the Empire State Building has a routine. What the record actually saysThe National Weather Service files “lightning never strikes the same place twice” under myths, sitting next to the belief that crouching in an open field will save you. In an hour and a half, the CN Tower absorbed more lightning than it normally sees in a year. Tall structures can launch their own leader upward into the storm, a discharge that begins at ground level and climbs. People are not towersRoy Sullivan patrolled Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and between 1942 and 1977 lightning found him seven separate times.