Berlin/Dresden (dpa/sn) – There was more lightning in Saxony in 2021 than in the previous year. According to measurements by the Siemens Lightning Information Service, 15,725 lightning strikes in Bavaria. That corresponds to 0.85 impacts per square kilometer. The year before, there were 12,643 lightning strikes. In a country comparison, the Free State is in ninth place. The front runner in the Free State was the city of Leipzig with 297 lightning bolts and a density of 1.42. The highest value in Germany comes from the district of Starnberg in Bavaria (7.6). Lightning strikes, so-called ground lightning, are always counted, not discharges within the clouds.
Lightning occurs during thunderstorms: the violent up and down of water and ice particles in the thundercloud leads to a polarization of the natural electricity in the air. If the voltage field between positive and negative charge becomes too strong, a lightning bolt will be discharged. There were a total of 491,000 lightning strikes in Germany last year, almost 100,000 more than in 2020.
