A bolt stretching nearly 800 kilometres (500 miles) across three states now holds the record for the longest lightning flash. On 7 February 2022,

Megaflash: Longest lightning flash ever breaks record

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2024-11-10 09:00:02

A bolt stretching nearly 800 kilometres (500 miles) across three states now holds the record for the longest lightning flash.

On 7 February 2022, the World Meteorological Organization announced that a single bolt on 29 April 2020 stretched over 767 kilometres (477 miles) across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This incredible length is equivalent to the distance between New York City and Columbus, Ohio.

Following April’s record-breaking bolt event, another lightning megaflash ripped through the skies of Uruguay and northern Argentina during a thunderstorm on 18 June 2020. The flash lasted 17 seconds, breaking the record for the longest lasting lightning flash.

WMO has verified 2 new world records for a ⚡️⚡️ #megaflash Greatest duration of 17.1 seconds over #Uruguay and #Argentina Longest distance of 768 km (477.2 miles) across southern #USA@NOAA imagery of US megaflash highlights advances in #satellites and detection technology pic.twitter.com/RazD75gqNM

Both events were considered cloud-to-cloud lightning flashes, lighting up the sky thousands of feet above the ground. Cloud-to-cloud lightning happens when a negatively charged cloud attracts a positively charged cloud. This type of lightning does not strike the ground, instead travelling from one cloud to another.