I’m surprised to hear that. The best figures I could find seemed pretty flimsy, but one [0] put it at an average of 58 deaths annually while another [1] put it at 407 deaths related to “wind-related tree failure” between 1995 and 2007 (of which 38% or ~155 were people who were outside at the time).

If the last figure accurately represents the proportion who died while outside (vs when trees crushed their homes or cars), it would seem that those ~13 people a year in the US track lower than deaths due to lightning strikes [2].

Personally I’d rather not be out in a storm any more than I’d want to swim during lightning, but in absolute terms it does seem to be a healthy three orders of magnitude safer than being in a car in the US (at ~37K direct fatalities annually [3]).

[0] https://weather.com/news/news/2021-05-11-falling-trees-durin...

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.45....

[2] https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-fatalities

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...