A single lightning bolt that stretched nearly 500 miles — crossing three U.S. states — has been certified as the world’s longest lightning strike.
On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced the certification of two new world records for “megaflashes of lightning” in hotspots in North and South America.
According to WMO’s Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes, on April 29, 2020, a single flash covered a horizontal distance of 477 miles on April 29, 2020 — over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — setting a new record of “longest reported distance for a single lightning flash.”
