‘Megaflash’ lightning bolt spanned 400 miles from Texas to Mississippi. It’s a record
A streak of lightning flashed across three U.S. states — and earned a spot in the record books.
The single bolt spanned more than 400 miles over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi in 2020, records show.
Now, the World Meteorological Organization said the flash of lightning is confirmed as the longest ever recorded worldwide.
Officials consider it a “megaflash,” lightning that extends hundreds of feet of horizontally, USA Today reported. The phenomenon requires “expansive electrified clouds” that can cause flashes to stretch long distances, according to information published Feb. 1 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Megaflashes can happen in places with Mesoscale Convective System thunderstorms, defined as a “collection of thunderstorms” with the potential to “spread across an entire state and last more than 12 hours,” NOAA said on its website.
The record-breaking lightning was part of storms caught on satellite near the Gulf of Mexico on April 29, 2020. That same day, KPRC reported the Houston area was battered with strong winds and hail.
The now-longest lightning bolt went across about 477 miles. That’s higher than the previous record, which covered about 440 miles when it crossed parts of Brazil in 2018, officials said in a news release.
It turns out, the United States isn’t the only place with a newly confirmed record.
The “greatest duration for a single lightning flash” is now more than 17 seconds — surpassing the previous time of 16.73 seconds, officials said. The flash that broke the record was tied to a storm reported in Argentina and Uruguay in June 2020.
Randall Cerveny, records confirmation chief for the World Meteorological Organization, told the Associated Press the new milestones were “absolutely extraordinary.” They happened between clouds and were discovered with new satellite tools, the news outlet reported
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 3:45 PM with the headline "‘Megaflash’ lightning bolt spanned 400 miles from Texas to Mississippi. It’s a record."
