Ratios of area mean rainfall and cloud‐to‐ground lightning flash count (termed “rain yields”) were computed for several different locations around the globe, over temporal and spatial scales of 1 month and 10⁴–10⁵ km², respectively. Values of the rain yield clustered near 10⁸ kg/fl for a large portion of the midcontinental United States. Rain yields were slightly lower over the arid southwestern United States, averaging ∼6×10⁷ kg/fl. In tropical locations the rain yields increased systematically from a tropical continental value of 4×10⁸ kg/fl to a value of 10¹⁰ kg/fl for the tropical western Pacific Ocean. The observed stability of the rain yield, coupled with demonstrated positive correlations between cloud‐to‐ground flash density and rainfall amount, suggests that cloud‐to‐ground lightning data may be useful for inferring monthly convective rainfall statistics in certain rainfall regimes.