A lightning bolt that stretched over almost 500 miles across three states in America now holds the new world record.
The World Meteorological Organization tweeted on Tuesday, that the #megaflash was recorded in April of 2020 stretching across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi at 60 kilometers more than the old record with an official distance of 477.2 miles (768 km).
“The is the same as the distance between London (UK) and Hamburg (Germany),” said WMO.
The previous record was over southern Brazil.
“These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events. Environmental extremes are living measurements of the power of nature, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments. It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves,” said Professor Randall Cerveny, rapporteur of Weather and Climate Extremes for WMO.
According to WMO, both flashes were cloud-to-cloud so no one was in danger and they were spotted by satellite.
Normally, lightning flashes last less than a second and don’t stretch more than 10 miles.
The greatest duration for a single lightning flash was 17.1 seconds during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18, 2020.
