File:Lightning distribution BE.png

Summary
Distribution of lightning strikes around a lightning rod in Bedrock Edition 1.17.34. North is up.

The lightning rod redirects lightning toward it in a 64-block radius sphere centered on the lightning rod.

The simulation distance for this test was set to 12 chunks, and the player remained above the rod location for the duration. This image shows that the simulation distance for lightning strikes uses taxicab distance rather than Euclidean distance (in which case the strike area would be circular). The distance from the lightning rod to each corner of the lightning strike area is 12 chunks.

The lightning rod is on top of a command block. There are two command blocks, one that replaces each lightning bolt entity with a sea lantern, feeding into a second command block that replaces the lightning rod after each strike, in case the first block transforms the rod into a sea lantern. I set the random tick speed to 100 and let it run for about 20 hours.