The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced a new world record for the longest lightning megaflash. The lightning traveled an incredible 829 km (515 miles) from Texas to Missouri, United States, in October 2017.
An enormous lightning megaflash crossed at least three states, stretching from eastern Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri. Traveling such a distance by car would take at least eight hours, or 90 minutes by commercial plane.
The 500-mile (800-kilometer) distance is, for example, equivalent to the distance between London, England, and Basel, Switzerland, in Europe, or the United States, between Boston (Massachusetts) and Washington, D.C.
That is an exceptional distance. Typically, the average bolt of lightning measures less than 10 miles (15 kilometers).
A so-called ‘megaflashes’ are detected by the new lightning detection equipment onboard satellites in orbit around the Earth. A megaflash is a horizontal lightning discharge reaching hundreds of kilometers/miles.
The new lightning flash record is older than the previous record-holder events, but it was recently discovered by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite. The new world record holder is one of the first megaflashes observed by GOES-16, which made detailed information about this particular lightning event available to scientists for nearly 10 years.
Quite often, a (lightning) discharge in one part of the storm can trigger an electrical disturbance on the other part of the clouds, which permits the lightning channel to continue growing and traveling long distances.
The United States sets a new world record for the longest distance for a lightning megaflash
The world record megaflash occurred in October 2017, during a major thunderstorm complex. It extended from eastern Texas to near Kansas City – equivalent to the distance between Paris and Venice in Europe.
There is a margin of error of ± 8 km (5 mi) in the new record of 829 km (515 miles). It is 61 kilometers greater than the previous record, which covered a distance of 768 ± 8 km (477.2 ± 5 miles) across parts of the southern United States on 29 April 2020.
This new record lightning flash occurred in one of the hotspots for Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) thunderstorms, whose dynamics permit extraordinary megaflashes. The region is known as the Great Plains in North America, the heart of the Tornado Alley.
This flash was not identified in the storm’s original 2017 analysis but was discovered after re-examining the thunderstorm data.
“A megaflash is a giant bolt of lightning that travels huge distances from its origin point. It is an extraordinary phenomenon. We only discovered them 10 years ago, when we could use a particular set of technologies to detect lightning events’ start and end locations.”
Before the US’s recorded event, the world’s longest reported distance for a single lightning flash was in Brazil. On October 31st, 2018, lightning covered a horizontal distance of 770 kilometers (440 miles) across part of southern Brazil.
There is a basic 30-30 rule existing for your safety:
Longest duration of lightning flash
Besides this new record, another impressive lightning megaflash past record is to be noted. It occurred over Argentina, setting the greatest duration for a single lightning flash at 17.102 seconds during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18th, 2020.
Recap on the lightning records worldwide
Lightning distance:
- The world record for the longest lightning megaflash is 829 km (515 miles) for the single lightning that traveled from Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri, United States in October 2017.
- The world’s second-longest reported distance for a single lightning flash occurred in southern Brazil on October 31st, 2018. A lightning strike covered a horizontal distance of 770 kilometers (440 miles).
- On June 20th, 2007, a single lightning flash traveled 321 kilometers (199 miles) in Oklahoma, United States.
Lightning duration:
- The world record megaflash for the greatest lightning duration occurred on June 18th, 2020, when a single lightning flash of 17.102 seconds was recorded during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina.
- The next closest record for the longest duration of a lightning strike was also detected over northern Argentina. On March 4th, 2019, a megaflash lasted for 16.730 seconds.
- The European record is 7.74 seconds in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, southern France, measured on August 30th, 2012. These records had been confirmed and were collected by ground-based lightning networks.
- Direct strike: 21 people were killed by a single flash of lightning as they huddled for safety in a hut in Zimbabwe in 1975.
- Indirect strike: 469 people were killed in Dronka, Egypt, when lightning struck a set of oil tanks, causing burning oil to flood the town in 1994.
“Over time, as the data record continues to expand, we will be able to observe even the rarest types of extreme lightning on Earth and investigate the broad impacts of lightning on society,” study lead author Michael Peterson, an atmospheric scientist in the Severe Storms Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a official statement.
Official WMO statement: WMO certifies Megaflash lightning extremes
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