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Lightning flashes that traveled 477 miles and lasted 17.1 seconds set records

However, the period of satellite records dates only to December 2017.

Lightning as seen from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on NOAA's GOES-16 satellite in April 2020. One of the lightning flashes within this thunderstorm complex was found by the World Meteorological Organization to be the longest flash on record and covered 477 miles.
Lightning as seen from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on NOAA's GOES-16 satellite in April 2020. One of the lightning flashes within this thunderstorm complex was found by the World Meteorological Organization to be the longest flash on record and covered 477 miles.Read moreNOAA
    by Anthony R. Wood
    Updated 
    Published 

Fewer weather phenomena have shorter careers than lightning flashes, but the World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that in April 2020 one traveled a record 477 miles from the southeastern Texas coast to near the Mississippi-Alabama border.

The flash lasted a full 8.55 seconds, Randall Cerveny, an Arizona State University professor and a WMO specialist in climate extremes, said Wednesday.

While impressive, that was nowhere near another record set two months later when a flash in South America endured a full 17.1 seconds.

The WMO announced Tuesday it had officially verified both the distance and duration marks. The findings were reported in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The period of record, however, dates only to December 2017, Cerveny said. That’s when the first satellites were launched with “this type of lightning detection and mapping capability.”

The new technology literally is miles above the traditional ground-based lightning-detection networks.

The previous longest flash, 440.6 miles, was observed over Brazil in 2018, the WMO said.

The organization said the records were set in thunderstorm “hotspots” for “mega-flashes.”