Solved cryptogram
Lightning strikes the same place again and again. Tall buildings are hit many times a year.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to National Weather Service.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 74 letters over 18 different ones, graded hard.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
The saying is not merely wrong, it is backwards. A lightning channel goes where the ground reaches up to meet it, so anything tall, isolated and conductive is preferentially struck, over and over. The Empire State Building takes around twenty strikes a year. A single flash often contains several strokes down the same channel within a fraction of a second, which is why lightning appears to flicker.
The claim comes from National Weather Service.
- SourceNational Weather Service
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultyhard
- Length74 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- UCAR Center for Science Educationeasy, 75 letters
- UCAR Center for Science Educationmedium, 71 letters
- National Snow and Ice Data Centermedium, 70 letters
- National Snow and Ice Data Centerhard, 74 letters
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