People killed by lightning

As Americans have consumed more butter, fewer of them have been killed by lightning, a correlation that butter enthusiasts will interpret as vindication and meteorologists will interpret as noise. The coefficient is -0.863 across seventeen years, during which butter made its comeback from dietary villain to culinary hero while lightning deaths dropped to historic lows. One pictures a cooking show host standing in a thunderstorm, holding a stick of Kerrygold like a talisman. The butter is unsalted, the sky is clear, and the correlation is pure coincidence.

US butter consumption reversed decades of decline around 2010, growing from about 4.6 pounds per capita to over 6.2 pounds as nutritional science rehabilitated saturated fats and cooking shows made butter-heavy recipes aspirational. Lightning deaths declined from about 48 to 11 per year, driven by better weather alerts, smartphone notifications, and the shift of American leisure time indoors. Both trends are products of the same cultural shift: Americans spend more time cooking at home (using more butter) and less time outdoors (encountering less lightning). The shared variable is the domestication of leisure—a society that cooks more and ventures out less.

Seventeen years of more butter and less lightning death is a correlation that captures the indoor turn of American life. The butter melts in the pan, the storm passes outside, and both trends measure a nation that increasingly experiences the world from its kitchen. The butter browns. The lightning strikes elsewhere. Neither knows the other exists.