A single bolt of lightning blasted the world record for longest flash when it stretched almost 500 miles over three states.
The bolt occurred on April 29, 2020, and had a length of roughly 477.2 miles, the World Meteorological Organization said Monday.
It lit up the sky across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the organization said.
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The single flash across the South beat the old record, which was set in Brazil at 440.6 miles, according to the organization.
2020 also saw the record for the length of time of a lightning bolt shattered.
WMO has verified 2 new world records for a⚡️lightning #megaflash
Longest distance single flash of 768 km (477.2 miles) across southern #USA – 60 kilometres MORE than old record
Greatest duration of 17.102 seconds over #Uruguay and northern #Argentina https://t.co/6AzyzTgMIO pic.twitter.com/VqUgxEDHB2— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) February 1, 2022
A bolt stretching from Uruguay to northern Argentina lit up the sky for 17.1 seconds, beating the previous record of 16.7 seconds, the organization said.
“These two lightning flash records are absolutely extraordinary,” Arizona State University’s Randall Cerveny, the chief of records confirmation for the WMO, said.
Lightning rarely stretches beyond 10 miles or lasts longer than a second, Cerveny said.
Both record-breaking strikes were harmless because they took place thousands of feet up and were cloud to cloud, he said.
They occurred in regions that are susceptible to massive storms that produce “megaflashes,” according to Cerveny.
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Neither strike is linked to climate change, and they were spotted using a new satellite tracking technology, according to a report.
