World record lightning bolt Stretched from Mississippi to Texas!

 As a meteorologist, there are few things more fascinating than weather and climate records. It took 1 1/2 years to confirm it, but a bolt of lightning in a complex of storms stretching across three southern U.S. states broke a record!  In South America another bolt broke a record for longest duration. Here's the story from Euronews, who reported findings from a journal. 

(Satellite image: A satellite photo of a thunderstorm complex that contained the longest single flash that covered a horizontal distance on record, in April 2020.   Credit:  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))

World record lightning bolt Stretched from Mississippi to Texas

EURONEWS Jan. 2, 2022

A lightning bolt in the southern United States that spread 477 miles / 768 kilometers across the sky has broken the record for the longest single flash, the United Nation's (UN)World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

It spread from Mississippi and Louisiana to Texas on April 29, 2020, covering a distance equivalent to between London and Hamburg, the UN weather agency added.

This new record is 37 miles / 60 kilometers longer than the previous record of 440.5 miles / 709 kilometers from a lighting bolt that flashed across parts of southern Brazil on October 31, 2018.

Another lightning record was broken in 2020, the global weather agency added, that of the longest duration of a lightning flash.

A bolt developed for 17.1 seconds during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18. 2020. The previous record was 16.73 seconds -- a flash that developed continuously over northern Argentina on March 4, 2019.

“These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events," said Professor Randall Cerveny, who verifies global weather records for the WMO. "It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves."

The record-breaking bolts occurred in hotspots of North and South America where "mega flashes" can occur -- in the Great Plains and in the La Plata basin.

Scientists warned that the extraordinary lightning flashes showed that people should be careful when they hear thunder and head for cover in substantial buildings or fully-covered vehicles.

“These extremely large and long-duration lightning events were not isolated but happened during active thunderstorms. Any time there is thunder heard it is time to reach a lightning-safe place," said lightning specialist Ron Holle in the statement released by WMO.

The new findings were published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.