This work addresses the long-term relative occurrence of cloud-to-ground (CG) and intracloud (IC; no attachment to ground) flashes for the contiguous United States (CONUS). It expands upon an earlier analysis by Boccippio et al. who employed 4-yr datasets provided by the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and the Optical Transient Detector (OTD). Today, the duration of the NLDN historical dataset has more than tripled, and OTD data can be supplemented with data from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS). This work is timely, given the launch of GOES-16, which includes the world's first geostationary lightning mapper that will observe total lightning (IC and CG) over the Americas and adjacent ocean regions.
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