Lightning strikes surge in Canada's north, but your home doesn't have to be next

The number of lightning strikes in Northern Canada is rising, sparking questions about a possible connection to climate change and the need for residents to protect their homes.

Environment Canada is only just starting to investigate the causes of this increase, said Gabor Fricska, lightning service development supervisor for the Meteorological Service of Canada.

Warming temperatures caused by climate change may be pushing frontal systems farther north, Fricska said. In thunderstorms, “you get a ridge build, things warm up, then you get a front moving through, things cool down and you get lightning,” he said. “These weather patterns seem to be getting locked in for longer periods.”

Regardless of the cause, Environment Canada’s lightning detection network, which has tracked lightning strikes since 1999, reveals a long-term upward trend in the territories and northern parts of provinces that could spell more destructive forest fires and increased property damage.
In the Yukon and Northwest Territories, lightning has more than doubled in the last 15 years.

Lightning-sparked wildfires were responsible for 93 per cent of the area burned in Canada in 2023. Northern communities such as Fort Smith, Hay River and Yellowknife, N.W.T., fled their homes. Last June, Yukon fire crews handled as many as 86 lightning-sparked wildfires, forcing them to enlist the help of crews from neighbouring British Columbia. Lightning also ignited the fires that ravaged Jasper National Park.

Many communities on the edges of Canada’s vast forests are taking measures to reduce risk to towns and homes, using wildfire resilience guides and government initiatives such as the Canadian Wildland Fire Prevention and Mitigation Strategy. But little has been done to prevent direct damage to houses from lightning bolts.

If lightning hits a rooftop, the current can travel through steel or metal to damage plugged-in devices and, in some cases, spark fires.
“A lot of times, the surge of the current through the house will end up frying appliances,” Fricska said. “When I hear reports of damage from lightning, more often than not, it's not that the place has caught fire. It's that the electronics have been fried.”

Early-2000s insurance data and estimates suggest that 3,000 to 5,000 Canadian homes and businesses may be struck by lightning each year, according to Environment Canada research scientist Brian Mills. “There’s a vulnerability or exposure aspect to that for in-house types of damages,” he said. Overall, lightning damages and disruptions may cost Canada between $600 million and $1 billion per year.

Around 2018, a lightning bolt even struck Environment Canada's office in Edmonton, Fricska recalled. The current surge swept around the building and — quite ironically — wiped out a server that ran a lightning analysis program. “People just need to be aware that lightning is dangerous,” Fricska said.

To protect appliances and electronics, Fricska and others recommend installing lightning rods and surge protectors that ground lightning currents.
Hal Smith, president of Island Lightning Rod serving Atlantic Canada, said a system of lightning rods, down conductor cables and grounding is a simple, affordable and life-lasting way to protect devices, data and entire homes.

“Most of the [customer] calls come in, we find, directly after a bad storm,” he said. “We hear that all their electronics were fried or their chimney got hit and the masonry stones all were laying on the ground.” One person had lightning travel down a metal propane line into their fireplace, igniting flames beneath the floor. Smith’s even had customers who’ve lost their homes in lightning-sparked fires.

To ensure safety, some 12-inch lightning rods and a couple grounding rods can protect a 100-foot-long bungalow, for example, while a 30-foot-tall house needs longer lightning rods and double the grounding rods, David Hodgson of Ontario’s North Star Lightning Rods advises.
For homeowners on the fence about lightning protection, service providers can give free on-site lightning risk assessments using the Canadian Standards Association’s lightning protection guide. Higher-risk properties may have trees, elevated land, proximity to water, wooden architecture or steel roofing.

Mills and Hodgson note that houses with greater numbers of electronics also have increased risk of damage, as more computers and other devices are hooked up to wiring that can help move lightning currents.
Smith estimates average lightning protection systems cost $2,500 to $3,000. And surge protectors cost about $1,000, only take an hour to install and prevent power surges from frying appliances such as TVs and washer-dryers, said David Audy, owner of Absolutely Electrical in Saanich, B.C.

While lightning strikes are rising in the north, the opposite is happening in southern Canada. It’s not clear why, but Fricska speculates it could be linked to drier climate, stabler weather patterns or less atmospheric capacity for storms. Wildfire smoke and fire-caused pyrocumulus clouds can also change lightning patterns, he said.
“Whether it’s something climate change-related,” Fricska said, “We don’t have a complete understanding yet.”

Canada has seen a steady injury rate and falling fatality rate from lightning since 2002, Mills said, with five lightning-related deaths since 2018.
Still, thunderstorms always contain lightning and will continue to pose safety risks, Mills cautioned, meaning “we’re all susceptible.”
Canada’s decrease in lightning “should be a false sense of security,” Fricska said, and finding a concrete cause behind it will take an uncertain amount of time.
“I’m hoping that people in the research community start to dig into this.”