"An enormous, 515-mile-long flash of lightning that crossed at least three states has been named the longest in recorded history in the world," the NBC News reports.

"The 2017 “megaflash” stretched from eastern Texas to near Kansas City — a distance that would take at least eight hours by car or 90 minutes by commercial plane, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In comparison, the average bolt of lightning usually measures less than 10 miles, according to the National Weather Service.



"A megaflash is a giant bolt of lightning that travels huge distances from its origin point, said Randall Cerveny, a professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University and a member of the WMO committee that confirmed the new record."

"The longest lightning flash on record is a "megaflash" that occurred on October 22, 2017, and stretched for 515 miles (829 km) from eastern Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. (AI Overview)

"The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) certified the record-breaking flash, which was discovered through a re-examination of NOAA's GOES-16 satellite data using new analytical techniques.

"This megaflash was part of a larger thunderstorm complex in the Great Plains and was documented as a single, continuous discharge of lightning. It surpassed the previous record holder from 2020, which spanned 477 miles (768 km)."

"There is a new world record for the longest lightning flash. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the record-breaking strike was an incredible 515 miles long. It would take a car about eight to nine hours and a commercial plane at least 90 minutes to cover that distance," the KBTX  News 3 reports.

"The mega lightning strike happened in October 2017 from east Texas to near Kansas City. The record was verified using satellite technology. The World Meteorological Organization said this flash was not identified in the original analysis of the storm back when it happened, but it was recently discovered through a re-examination of the thunderstorm.

"The previous record for longest lightning strike was 477.2 miles across the southern U.S. spanning Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi."

"The flash — dubbed a "megaflash," or a single continuous long horizontal flash that can initiate up to hundreds of cloud-to-ground strikes — happened on Oct. 22, 2017, according to a research report published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. While the storm that day had previously been analyzed by scientists, new satellite technology recently documented the megaflash exceeding 500 miles," the CBS News reports.

"The previous world record recognized by the World Meteorological Organization was a megaflash on April 29, 2020, extending 477 miles across the southern United States and the Gulf of Mexico, the researchers said. 

"While the 2017 megaflash may be the longest in horizontal distance, it did not have the longest duration. Researchers estimated that it lasted just over 7 seconds. The current WMO-recognized record for longest duration megaflash occurred over Argentina and Uruguay in June 2020 and was about 17 seconds."

"A lighting flash that spanned from East Texas to an area near Kansas City in 2017 is officially the longest lightning strike ever measured, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the Scientific American says.

"Guinness World Records may be the go-to organization for measuring the extent of (sometimes dubious) human achievement, but for natural phenomena, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes sets the bar. Recently the committee certified a new record: the longest lightning strike ever measured. The bolt, which materialized on a stormy day in October 2017, spanned a total of 515 miles from East Texas to an area near Kansas City.



"When a potentially record-breaking weather event occurs, it gets passed to the committee, where a panel of scientists and other experts assesses whether the event truly represents a new record. If the panel votes to approve it, the record is entered into the WMO’s World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive. Michael Peterson, an atmospheric scientist at the Severe Storms Research Center at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, flagged the new record-holder last year while reanalyzing 2017 satellite data. Recording such extreme weather events can help us develop new tools to predict severe storms and understand their behavior, he says."

"Sparked by a major thunderstorm complex rumbling over the Great Plains, a single megaflash lightning bolt captured by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite was recently certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the world’s longest flash on record. The horizontal distance of the bolt stretched 515 miles (829 km) from eastern Texas to near Kansas City, Mo., when it flashed across the sky on October 22, 2017," the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service  says.

"This particular flash was not identified in the original 2017 analysis of the thunderstorm, but was discovered through a recent re-examination. It is nearly 38 miles (61 km) longer than the previous record-setting flash that lit up the southern U.S. on April 29, 2020, which was also verified through GOES-16 satellite imagery."

"The World Meteorological Organization says there is a new record-holder when it comes to lightning bolts seen from space - an extraordinary 515-mile streak which illuminated the skies from eastern Texas through Missouri in October 2017.

"The record-breaking "megaflash" occurred during a thunderstorm system known as a Mesoscale Convective System, which was moving along the Gulf Coast ahead of a frontal boundary," the FOX Weather reports.

"Members of the WMO said they were able to identify the bolt using satellite-based mapping technology and submitted their findings to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society."

"The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established a new world record for the longest lightning flash – an incredible 829 km (515 miles) in a notorious storm hotspot in the United States of America," the World Meteorological Organization says.

"The 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. It would take a car about eight to nine hours and a commercial plane at least 90 minutes to cover that distance.

"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. 

"WMO’s Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes, which maintains official records of global, hemispheric and regional extremes, recognized the new record with the help of the latest satellite technologies. The findings were published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society."

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