There are few things in nature that evoke as much awe and mystery as a lightning bolt; these streaks of crackling white light, coming from seemingly nowhere and somewhere above the clouds all at the same time, crash down and leave a thunderous boom that can be heard far and wide.
To be clear, science isn’t even fully done understanding what is basically an everyday occurrence. Lightning strikes, despite happening at likely every waking moment somewhere around the world, still have some of its properties left unexplored—and if the recent news from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s images captured by the GOES-East satellite is anything to go by, we have quite a lot of ground to cover.
The U.S.-based organization reported at the beginning of February that their satellite took a photo of what is likely the longest “megaflash” of lightning ever observed; the giant bolt, recorded back on April 29, 2020, stretched from somewhere south of Houston, Texas to the southeastern Mississippi—a stretch of 767 km (477 mi). This remarkable phenomenon was recorded and published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Mind you, megaflashes aren’t like your standard lightning bolts that simply hit the ground. These bolts seemingly jump between electrified clouds, and with a large enough thunderstorm can stretch vast distances and stay there for up to ten (10) seconds.
This giant flash of lightning beat the previous record-holder, a megaflash that swept across the skies of southern Brazil back in 2018, by at least 60 km (37 mi). This recent world record megaflash was certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and was announced by the organization’s press release.
WMO certification analysis lead and Los Alamos National Laboratory atmospheric scientists Michael Peterson commented on the remarkable phenomenon: “Lightning is a surprisingly elusive and complex natural phenomenon for the impact that it has on our daily lives. 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.”
With the help of satellites like GOES-East, scientists now have much better eyes at the sky to scan for these monster lightning bolts. With cooperation between countries with their own lightning-mapping technologies now underway, we now have unprecedented worldwide coverage of these natural phenomena.
Peterson continued: “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. There is still a lot that we do not know about these monsters.”
(For more bizarre discoveries about our planet, read about the deepest earthquake on record and about 2021 being the sixth hottest year on record.)
References
- McFall-Johnsen, M. (2022, February 1). Space images show 477-mile lightning ‘megaflash’ that crossed 3 states and broke a world record. Business Insider Australia. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/lightning-megaflash-over-us-south-is-longest-ever-recorded-2022-2
- Peterson, M. J., Lang, T. J., Logan, T., Kiong, C. W., Gijben, M., Holle, R., Kolmasova, I., Marisaldi, M., Montanya, J., Pawar, S. D., Zhang, D., Brunet, M., & Cerveny, R. S. (2022). New wmo certified megaflash lightning extremes for flash distance (768 km) and duration (17.01 seconds) recorded from space. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1(aop). https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0254.1
- WMO certifies two megaflash lightning records. (2022, January 31). World Meteorological Organization. https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-certifies-two-megaflash-lightning-records
