A massive bolt of lightning streaked across the sky over the vast expanse of the Great Plains, spanning an incredible distance of 515 miles (829 kilometers) from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City. This extraordinary “megaflash” broke the previous record for the longest lightning bolt, which was set at 477 miles (768 kilometers) in 2023.

In a recent publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, an international team of researchers detailed the groundbreaking megaflash event. The scientists managed to capture this unprecedented phenomenon due to advancements in satellite technology and innovative computational tools.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a branch of the United Nations dedicated to meteorology, officially acknowledged this new lightning record on July 31.

Discussing this remarkable occurrence, Randy Cerveny, a geography professor at Arizona State University and one of the report’s authors, referred to it as megaflash lightning and highlighted ongoing efforts to understand its underlying mechanisms.

Typically, lightning bolts have vertical lengths ranging from 3.7 to 6 miles (6 to 10 kilometers), with some extending as high as 12 miles (20 kilometers). However, horizontally, lightning flashes can travel much farther distances — occasionally stretching hundreds of miles. A megaflash is defined as a lightning bolt that spans beyond 60 miles (100 kilometers), and less than 1% of thunderstorms are known to produce these rare occurrences based on past satellite observations.

Previously, scientists heavily relied on ground-based antenna networks for lightning detection. These antennas pick up radio signals emitted by lightning strikes and use timing variances between antennas to estimate the flash’s location and speed.

However, with the advent of satellite-equipped lightning detectors around 2017, researchers gained the capability to detect and measure lightning over expansive continental areas.

The data utilized in the recent report were collected by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite, launched in late 2016, alongside multiple other weather-monitoring satellites. These satellites utilize specialized optical sensors designed to measure the radiant energy emitted during a lightning discharge, enabling researchers to accurately determine its position and scope.

Thanks to this advanced satellite technology, researchers have identified hundreds of megaflashes. Over time, records for the longest megaflash have continuously been surpassed, culminating most recently in the 2023 event spanning 477 miles (768 kilometers).

Certain challenges arose when processing some satellite data using older computational techniques. Through the application of updated and more effective algorithms, researchers successfully reanalyzed the data and pinpointed the new record-setting megaflash.

Anticipating future developments in this field, scientists predict that megaflashes will become even more spectacular. Cerveny expressed confidence that further advancements in high-quality lightning measurements will likely reveal even greater extremes in these natural phenomena.