Lightning 'Megaflash' Stretching 515 Miles Set New World Record

A lightning flash that spanned 515 miles from eastern Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri, in 2017 has officially been recognized as the new world record for the longest lightning strike, according to a recent study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The event, dubbed a “megaflash,” occurred on October 22, 2017, and is described as a single continuous horizontal flash capable of initiating hundreds of cloud-to-ground strikes. While the storm had been studied before, new satellite technology has now provided the precise data confirming its extraordinary length.

Previously, the world record for a megaflash was held by a 477-mile strike recorded on April 29, 2020, which spanned the southern United States and the Gulf of Mexico. However, the 2017 event, though longer in distance, lasted just over 7 seconds. In contrast, the longest duration megaflash, recognized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), occurred in June 2020 over Argentina and Uruguay and lasted approximately 17 seconds.

Michael Peterson, the lead author of the study and a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, expressed excitement about the potential of new technologies to uncover more such extreme lightning events. He emphasized the importance of expanding global lightning monitoring through improved satellite coverage.

Randall Cerveny, the WMO’s weather and climate extremes rapporteur, noted that as more high-quality lightning data becomes available, it is likely that even more extreme lightning events will be discovered in the future.

This discovery not only highlights the power of natural phenomena but also underscores the value of advanced technology in understanding and predicting weather patterns on a global scale.