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A massive lightning ‘megaflash’ set a world record — it stretched for a whopping 515 miles
A single flash of lightning that stretched across the Great Plains, from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City, Missouri, turned out to be a staggering 515 miles long. A new report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society documented the new lightning record, which beat the previous title holder, a 477-mile bolt from April 2020.
Heat and humidity fueled a dazzling lightning show across the Washington and Baltimore region on Wednesday night.
A megaflash lightning strike is an unusually long lightning bolt that stretches at least 62 miles. These aren’t your typical lightning strikes from an ordinary thunderstorm.
According to the NWS, the lightning strike was "cloud-to-ground lightning," the most common type. "The chance of an individual in the U.S. being struck during a given year is one in 1.2 million.
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