BANG!

Shockingly Long Lightning Bolt Breaks World Record

A lightning bolt observed in 2017 was named the longest lightning bolt in recorded history.

In a flash, a single lightning bolt lit up the sky across three states in the Great Plains. On Thursday, after careful reexamination of the bolt’s path and storm data, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) named the 515-mile-long bolt the longest recorded lightning bolt in recorded history. During a series of severe thunderstorms in 2017, the “megaflash” started in eastern Texas and ended near Kansas City, a vast stretch of land that the WMO considers a storm hotspot. A “megaflash,” as the organization defines it, is qualified as a lightning bolt of “extremely long duration/distance lightning discharge.” The average bolt goes no more than 10 to 12 miles, according to the National Weather Service. Megaflashes were only discovered about a decade ago, Randall Cerveny, a member of the WMO, told NBC. Thanks to the invention of technology that can detect the start and end points of a lightning bolt, these megaflashes can now be detected. As technology advances and the weather records become more accurate, weather researchers “will be able to observe even the rarest types of extreme lightning on Earth and investigate the broad impacts of lightning on society,” weather researcher Michael Peterson said in a statement.