AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas saw more lightning strikes in 2021 than any other state, a recent report by AEM found. This was an increase over the year prior. Central Texas saw nearly a 50% increase in lightning strikes last year.

Meteorologist Nick Bannin spoke with the team at AEM about its research and how it obtained the data. Check out the interview below to learn more.

NICK BANNIN, KXAN: Anuj Agrawal joins us from AEM, which is an environmental insights company. Anuj, now that you have some fresh data about the number of lightning strikes in Texas, what do you want to share?

ANUJ AGRAWAL, AEM: Yeah, I mean, every year, our Earth networks brand publishes a lending report for the entire U.S., and we actually published it for other regions of the world. Texas led the way in 2020. We’re 69 million lightning pulses in Texas, which was about a 9% increase over 2020.

When you get down to the county level in your viewing area, though, over 45% increase from 2020. And in places like San Saba County, Travis County, the learning activity was greatly increased from 2020, which was very interesting to see.

BANNIN: I believe your studies had said that. San Saba actually was in the top five counties in Texas for lightning, right?

AGRAWAL: That’s right. It was number four, it had 634,000. We call them pulses, lending pulses. Twenty-six thousand of those were the variety that actually reached the ground.

BANNIN: When you get this information, who uses it, and how does it help them protect themselves?

AGRAWAL: The data, it all comes from a lightning network that AEM owns. There’s over 1,800 sensors across the globe. When you talk about measuring something like lightning. It’s always a little bit of an estimate based on the technology, but the technology has gotten so good that it’s now within 100 meters accuracy of where we tell you the learning is going to happen.

That precision is needed for for organizations like schools, parks, airports, in fact, at the Austin airport, they’re using our technology there. Multiple airlines using our technology there.