Rob, I agree that a lot of the lightening damage potential depends on where you live. According to this study I found on the net, Washington actually has the least amount of lightening density out of the 48 U.S. mainland states. As I suspected, Florida is number 1, my state is near the top 20.
Bettle, you should consider yourself lucky if you've never disconnected your feedlines from your gear and never suffered any losses due to lightning. Even a static charge can damage the front end and finals of most newer solid state rigs. Like you pointed out, lightening will do what it wants to do, it can jump across most grounding junctions and grounding type antenna switch boxes, the best way to protect your gear is not to have any of your transceivers connected to the antenna/ground/or AC during a thunderstorm.
I've seen more than a few rigs that have suffered damage from being connected to ground during a storm even though the AC line and antenna were disconnected. I know several older gents who refuse to use any type of grounding in the shack because of this issue.
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Rank of Cloud-to-Ground Flash Densities by State from 1996 - 2005
State Flashes Flashes
Per Year Per Square Mile
1. Florida 1507277 26.3
2. Louisiana 975187 21.1
3. Mississippi 878934 18.4
4. Alabama 853644 16.5
5. South Carolina 459326 14.8
6. Tennessee 604955 14.4
7. Indiana 517140 14.3
8. Georgia 835114 14.2
9. Oklahoma 966295 13.8
10. Missouri 952823 13.7
11. Kentucky 546989 13.6
12. Arkansas 718581 13.5
13. Illinois 759609 13.5
14. District of Columbia 772 11.4
15. Ohio 452721 11.0
16. Texas 2875027 10.8
17. North Carolina 535388 10.8
18. Kansas 851520 10.4
19. Iowa 560847 9.9
20. West Virginia 213625 8.8
21. Virginia 346751 8.6
22. Maryland 85866 8.6
23. New Mexico 919464 7.6
24. Delaware 14784 7.4
25. Pennsylvania 307297 6.8
26. Nebraska 460876 6.0
27. Arizona 673320 5.9
28. New Jersey 40851 5.4
29. Wisconsin 292622 5.2
30. Michigan 302614 5.2
31. Colorado 517267 5.0
32. South Dakota 372113 4.8
33. Minnesota 391573 4.6
34. New York 218099 4.5
35. North Dakota 289633 4.1
36. Connecticut 17181 3.5
37. Wyoming 308550 3.2
38. Utah 260260 3.1
39. Massachusetts 22967 2.8
40. Montana 363456 2.5
41. Vermont 23304 2.5
42. New Hampshire 19945 2.2
43. Rhode Island 2216 2.1
44. Nevada 172152 1.6
45. Maine 39663 1.2
46. Idaho 85343 1.0
47. California 90577 0.6
48. Oregon 51738 0.5
49. Washington 20050 0.3
