A lightning detection and damage estimation system for a structure is disclosed herein. The system includes a lightning receptor coupled to a lightning conductor configured to receive multiple lightning strikes and induce lightning current in a pick-up coil coupled to the lightning conductor. An integrated circuit coupled to the lightning conductor via the pick-up coil includes a non-volatile memory for successively storing one or more samples of the lightning induced current for the multiple lightning strikes. A damage estimation unit is configured to estimate a condition of the structure based on analyzing a history of stored samples of the lightning induced current of the multiple lightning strikes from the non-volatile memory.