It was a single lightning flash that streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles, from eastern Texas nearly all the way to Kansas City, setting a new world record.
It was a single lightning flash that streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles, from eastern Texas nearly all the way to Kansas City, setting a new world record.
“We call it megaflash lightning, and we're just now figuring out the mechanics of how and why it occurs,” said Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University President’s Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning.
Cerveny and colleagues used space-based instruments to measure the megaflash, which took place during a major thunderstorm in October 2017.
Its astonishing horizontal reach surpasses by 38 miles the previous record of 477 miles recorded during an April 2020 storm in the southern U.S. The new record-setter went unnoticed until a re-examination of satellite observations from the 2017 storm.
Read more at Arizona State University
Photo Credit: sethink via Pixabay
