A lightning bolt so huge that it stretched from Texas all the way to Missouri has now been confirmed as the longest one ever recorded.
It reached an unbelievable 515 miles, crossing state after state like a glowing thread across the sky.
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Scientists first saw this strange flash back in 2017, but only recently were they able to study it closely with new satellite tools.
What they found was a record breaker that changed what we thought we knew about lightning.
For years, the longest known lightning flash measured 477 miles. That record is now gone.
This new megaflash beat it by 38 miles and almost crossed the entire width of the southeastern United States.
It showed just how far a lightning bolt can travel when the atmosphere is in the perfect mood for something extreme.
Scientists call events like this a megaflash. A megaflash is not your everyday spark in the clouds.
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Normal lightning usually spans less than ten miles. Megaflashes can reach more than one hundred miles and sometimes stretch hundreds of miles across huge storm systems.
They are rare and powerful, and researchers are still trying to understand how they grow so large.
As one scientist explained, megaflash lightning is still new to science, and we are only starting to uncover how these giant bolts move across the sky.
To measure this 515 mile flash, researchers used the GOES 16 satellite. This satellite watches weather from high above Earth and carries a special tool that tracks lightning around the clock.
It sees millions of flashes every day and helps scientists spot unusual ones inside massive storms.
With careful study of its images and new ways of reading the data, the team was able to trace the full path of the megaflash. They mapped every branch and every twist, finally proving its enormous size.
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The flash formed inside a long lasting storm system that stayed active for many hours.
These large storms, sometimes as wide as an entire state, create the perfect setup for megaflashes.
They do not appear in every storm, but they show up often enough that scientists believe we will find more of them as our tools keep improving.
Some experts even think that longer lightning bolts may already exist, waiting for better technology to reveal them.
This record breaking flash is more than an amazing story. It gives researchers a deeper look into the extremes of our planet’s weather.
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By understanding how these giant lightning events form, scientists can improve storm forecasts, study storm safety for airplanes, and learn more about the hidden behavior of lightning inside the clouds.
The findings, now published in a scientific journal, open a new chapter in the study of one of nature’s most dramatic electrical shows.