515-Mile Lightning Bolt, as Big as 7,553 Football Fields, Breaks World Record
The World Meteorological Organization confirmed a new world record for lightning discharge distance
The powerful lightning bolt, also known as a megaflash, stretched 515 miles from eastern Texas to Kansas City, Mo.
The average lightning bolt size is 10 to 12 milesAn electric weather phenomenon just broke a world record.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported on July 31 that a megaflash has set a new world record for lightning discharge distance.
The massive lightning bolt — stretching 515 miles — struck on Oct. 22, 2017, and extended from eastern Texas to Kansas City in Missouri.
PEOPLE calculated that it was roughly as long as 7,553 football fields.
Compared to the new 515-mile world record, the average lightning bolt size is 10 to 12 miles, according to the National Weather Service.
The previous record was a 477-mile megaflash that struck from Texas to Mississippi in April 2020, according to a July 2025 WMO video.
Researchers verified the new record using satellite technology.
The new findings, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, explained the importance of documenting megaflashes.
https://people-app.onelink.me/HNIa/kz7l4cuf
'Documenting extreme cases of megaflashes — where nearly the entire electrified stratiform region in storms spanning multiple states is discharged all at once — is important for lightning physics to understand the limits of what lightning in expansive charge reservoirs is capable of, and for lightning safety by revealing the maximum extent of lightning hazards from the most impactful individual flashes on Earth,' scientists wrote.
Researchers continued in the newly published report: 'Each new extreme event identified provides insights into the context, locations, and environments conducive to expansive flashes that are necessary to ultimately answer the question of why certain organized convective systems produce megaflashes while other similar systems produce none.'
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