Lightning Snaked 477 Miles Across 3 U.S. States, Set World Record

ACROSS AMERICA — An enormous lightning megaflash that moved from one electrified cloud to the next traveled 477 miles across three Southern states, smashing a previous world record for the single largest flash by about 37 miles, the World Meteorological Organization said this week.

A megaflash is defined as any horizontal lightning bolt that travels more than 62 miles. By that standard, this one, which covered parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on April 29, 2020, was a megaflash times seven.

The area the strike spanned is approximately the same distance between New York City and Columbus Ohio, or between London and Hamburg, Germany.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-16 satellite captured footage of the megaflash lightning bolt as it snaked across the skies.

The record was one of two set in “notorious hot spots” in North and South America announced by the meteorological group this week.

The other was for the greatest duration of a single lightning flash. On June 18, 2020, a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina produced a lightning strike that lasted just over 17 seconds.

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The more scientists know about lightning hot spots — in North America, that’s the Great Plains — the better people in areas prone to these electrical storms can prepare.

“Lightning is a surprisingly elusive and complex natural phenomenon for the impact that it has on our daily lives," said Michael J. Peterson, lead author of the analysis published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

“We are now at a place where we have excellent measurements of its many facets, which allow us to discover surprising new aspects of its behavior,” he said in a statement.

Lightning kills 49 people a year on average, according to the National Weather Service.

“Now that we have a robust record of these monster flashes, we can begin to understand how they occur and appreciate the disproportionate impact that they have,” Peterson said. “There is still a lot that we do not know about these monsters, but as an early career scientist, it is a privilege to stand among my colleagues at the forefront of this new and exciting area of research and to push the boundaries of our understanding of what lightning is capable of."

Randall Cerveny, a professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University and rapporteur of weather and climate extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, called the records “extraordinary.”

“Environmental extremes are living measurements of the power of nature, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments,” he said in a news release announcing the study, which was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

“It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves,” he said.

The record-setting megaflashes were not “isolated” but occurred during a thunderstorm, Ron Holle, a lightning expert for the WMO Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes, said in the statement.

When thunder starts to rumble, it’s time to seek out a lightning-safe place, he said.

The best place to go is to an enclosed building. Look for the types of buildings that have plumbing and wiring, he said, rather than a beach hut or bus stop. Fully enclosed, metal-topped automobiles are the next best option to a building, Holle said.

"As these extreme cases show, lightning can arrive within seconds over a long distance, but they are embedded within larger thunderstorms, so be aware," Holle said.