A jaw-dropping 515-mile lightning bolt lit up the skies from Texas to Kansas City, smashing previous records and reshaping our understanding of extreme weather. Thanks to advanced satellite tech, scientists like Randy Cerveny and Michael Peterson are uncovering the mechanics of "megaflash" lightning—rare,

Though it struck over the U.S. years ago, experts have only recently determined that a lightning bolt that a lightning flash that extended from Texas to Missouri back in October 2017 was actually the longest in recorded history.

A stroke of lighting that lasted more than 7 seconds and flashed across 829 kilometres is officially the longest ever recorded

A 515-mile-long lightning strike that traveled from Texas to Missouri has been confirmed as the new world record.

Scientists using satellite data discovered a record-breaking lightning bolt that stretched 515 miles from Texas to Kansas City in 2017.

A single flash of lightning that stretched across the Great Plains, from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City, Missouri, turned out to be a staggering 515 miles long. A new report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society documented the new lightning record, which beat the previous title holder, a 477-mile bolt from April 2020.

A lightning flash tore across the sky above the Great Plains, stretching across a staggering 515 miles (829 kilometers) from eastern Texas to Kansas City. That “megaflash” shattered the previous record for longest lightning flash of 477 miles (768 kilometers), set in 2023.

NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite detects around one million lightning flashes per day from its perch high above the Earth. It is the first of four NOAA satellites that’s equipped with geostationary lightning mappers and is joined by similar satellites launched by Europe and China.

Lightning is a familiar sight in stormy skies, but a new report has revealed just how far some bolts can travel — in one case, more than 500 miles.