I noticed today when trying to use the setblock command to place a lightning rod on the ground in front of me that the lightning rod is placed upside down. I have tried several data variants at the end such as (setblock ~ ~ ~ lightning_rod 1) and it still places upside down. Not sure if this is a bug or if I am doing something incorrectly, but with the new update I though I'd share. Cheers.
The default position is the same as with levers and item frames: attach to the block above.
The bug here is that data values are ignored, making it impossible to /setblock a lightning rod in any other position.
A workaround would be to place a lightning rod in the orientation you want, and then /clone it to the desired location instead of using /setblock.