Texas recorded more lightning strikes in 2019 than any other state

Texans are used to seeing lightning illuminate the sky during a thunderstorm.

In fact, Texas led the nation in lightning strikes last year, with 47,397,975 lightning strikes recorded, according to a new report by Vaisala. That’s more than three times the second state on the list Oklahoma, which recorded 14,772,145 lightning strikes in 2019.

“Although some of the traditional lightning hotspots like Florida had less lightning than normal, other states, such as Texas, had significantly more,” Casey McCullar, Vaisala Digital’s head of lightning, said in a statement. “Of note, the Pacific Northwest heard a lot of thunder last year – Washington and Oregon each had more lightning in 2019 than in any year since 2015.”

Vaisala’s U.S. National Lightning Detection Network monitors lightning activity year round, 24 hours a day, including in-cloud lightning and cloud-to-ground lightning. Vaisala works with meteorological institutes across the world to provide environmental and industrial measurements.

Texas’ geographic location, humidity, and the state’s massive size make it an annual contender to lead the nation in lightning strikes, according to the report. When the number of lightning strikes were measured by density per square kilometer, Texas dropped on the list to No. 4, with 69 lightning strikes per square kilometer in 2019. When adjusted by density, Florida takes the top spot, followed by Oklahoma and Missouri.

Of the more than 47 million lightning strikes in Texas last year, more than 1 million of them were attributed to Tropical Storm Imelda, which hit the Texas coast in September, according to the report.

Lightning strikes killed at least 19 people in the U.S. last year, according to The Washington Post. The National Weather Service says the odds of being struck by lightning in the U.S. in a given year are 1 in 1,220,000.

A Southeast Texas man was struck by lightning in October while walking his dogs. The incident was caught on video from a nearby veterinary hospital’s security camera. The man survived, but lost hearing in an ear and suffered burn marks from his chest to his thigh and his left foot.