US lightning flash was longest on record at 515 miles, scientists say
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed the new world record for the flash registered on 22 October 2017 over the Great Plains in the US. It stretched from east Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri, roughly the distance between Paris and Venice.
Since 2016, scientific advances in space-based mapping have allowed for lightning flashes to be measured over a broader space, allowing these long flashes to be recorded.
This event was one of the first flashes to be documented using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest model of orbital satellite, known as a geostationary operational environmental satellite.
Michael J Peterson, the lead author and an evaluation committee member of the Severe Storms Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said: “The extremes of what lightning is capable of is difficult to study because it pushes the boundaries of what we can practically observe. Adding continuous measurements from geostationary orbit was a major advance.”
Before using orbital satellites to record the duration and length of lightning flashes, data was collected by ground-based sensors. Many scientists acknowledged that there were limits to the duration and length of lightning they could record with these ground sensors.
