In 2022, the Swabian city recorded the highest lightning density of all rural districts and independent cities nationwide, with 2.45 strikes per square kilometer, as announced by the Siemens lightning information service on Monday. The next four districts in the nationwide ranking are also in the south-west of Bavaria: Ostallgäu, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Lindau and Weilheim-Schongau have values between 2.2 and 1.78 flashes per square kilometer.
The frontrunners have comparatively low values this year – in 2021 Kempten would only have ranked 58th with 2.45. Starnberg, the lightning hotspot at the time, was more than three times as much, and Kempten itself was twice as much.
At the other end of the scale, Bavaria only takes second place among the cities, districts and counties with the least lightning. The city of Hof with 0.07 flashes per square kilometer is undercut by Brandenburg an der Havel with 0.04. Lightning was also very rare nationwide last year: 242,421 lightning strikes are the lowest value in the history of measurements dating back to 1991. In 2021 it had flashed almost twice as often.
The head of the Blitz information service, Stephan Thern, sees the reason for the decline in the drought last year, among other things. “In the summer, especially in June and August, there were sometimes extreme droughts with high temperatures of over 35 degrees,” he said. “But for thunderstorms you need both – moisture and hot temperatures.” Typically, summer is therefore the main thunderstorm season.
In July 2022, which was particularly dry, the system counted only 31,040 lightning bolts across Germany – that’s less than a third of the value from the previous year. The most lightning month of the year was June with 65,969 lightning strikes, which was not yet affected by the severe drought. The day with the most lightning was August 26 with more than 26,000 strikes.
In a comparison of the federal states, Bavaria is in second place with 0.85 impacts per square kilometer behind Baden-Württemberg with 0.97. Above all in Upper and Lower Franconia there are numerous districts and cities that are well below the German average of 0.7 and pull the overall average of the Free State down. In addition to Hof, these include the city of Würzburg with 0.15, the city of Bamberg with 0.22 and the district of Kitzingen with 0.26.
The lightning is measured with the help of around 160 interconnected measuring stations in Europe. Although there are up to 350 kilometers between the sensors, the lightning strikes can be determined with an accuracy of up to 50 meters.