The average lightning strike can pack a punch. But then there are superbolts. First identified in the 1970s by satellites designed to monitor nuclear explosions, they can be thousands of times more energetic than normal lightning.

But you’re even less likely to be struck by one: Scientists have mined data from the roughly 80 sensors of the World Wide Lightning Location Network to study where superbolts are found. They were surprised to discover that the most powerful lightning doesn’t occur in known lightning hot spots, or at times of year when lightning usually strikes. Instead, they reported last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, superbolts predominantly occur over open water from November through February.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

Robert Holzworth, an atmospheric and space physicist at the University of Washington, and his colleagues analyzed more than 1.7 billion radio-frequency observations of lightning. Focusing on only the most robust detections of lightning strikes from 2010 to 2018, Dr. Holzworth and his team tagged 8,171 superbolts above one million Joules. That’s about 0.0005 percent of the lightning recorded by the lightning detection network, which he leads.

“It’s a tiny fraction,” Dr. Holzworth said. Superbolts are so rare that even he, one of the world’s foremost lightning experts, has never witnessed one firsthand.