Satellite Images Can See That Everyone Shops More On Black Friday

Do you know what’s a good way to know if people are shopping? By checking the parking lots. And according to satellite images from Remote Sensing Metrics, people have been shopping a lot more this year than years past.

Their data, which use satellite images of parking lots to determine parking lot capacity, shows that 35% of shopping mall parking spaces have been filled this year compared to the 31-32% of the previous two years. And this past Saturday, the last weekend before Black Friday, parking lots were 42.3% filled, compared with 36.5% in 2009 and 30.6% in 2008.

Which means it should all be leading up to the craziest Black Friday in years. Did anyone notice a difference? [Reuters via Fast Company]