It was that it produced so much more than similar higher-elevation areas along the plains, the Cheyenne Ridge to the north and the Raton Mesa to the south. What surprised Hodanish wasn't that the Palmer Divide produced heavy lightning. Colorado lightning activity from 1996-2016. National Weather Service and Brandon Vogt/University of Colorado Colorado Springs.

'Everything kind of comes together in that area,' Hodanish said. In this area, the researchers explained in their report published last month, three lightning-fueling factors come into play: the steep slope of Pikes Peak, which extends as far to the east as any large mountain on the Front Range and can act as a convector for lightning a storm-friendly dynamic known as the Denver Convergence Vorticity Zone, or the DCVZ, where high pressure winds from the north collide with moist low pressure off the plains and the higher-elevation Palmer Divide, which juts out onto the plains. Nowhere else in Colorado sees as heavy of a density of lightning strikes than the counties that straddle the Palmer Divide, the east-west ridge south of Denver, where Pikes Peak looms to the west and the plains stretch to the east.

But it wasn't until Hodanish and two colleagues – fellow National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Wolyn and University of Colorado Colorado Springs professor Brandon Vogt – actually sat down and mapped 20 years of lightning strikes that they realized just how much that was true, especially compared to the rest of the state. Stephen Hodanish, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pueblo, knew this area was rich with lightning during the stormy summer months. DENVER – In a lightning-prone state, no place in Colorado sees more of it than here: Along the Palmer Divide between Denver and Colorado Springs, near where Interstate 25 crosses the border of Douglas and El Paso counties.

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