A 440-mile-long "Megaflash" Enters the Record Books as the Longest Lightning Bolt Ever Observed

New technology enables scientists to document megaflashes spawned by monster storms.

ImaGeo iconImaGeo
By Tom Yulsman
Jul 20, 2020 9:15 PMJul 20, 2020 10:05 PM
Lightning Bolt
Most lightning — like this flash over Texas in 2009 — is impressive enough. But now, scientists have confirmed one so long that it defies the imagination. (Credit: Vortex II. Photographer: Sean Waugh NOAA/NSSL.)

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Imagine a lightning bolt igniting in a giant thunderstorm over San Diego and then shooting north almost all the way to San Francisco.

If that seems impossible, consider that just such a prodigious lightning flash has now been confirmed — not in SoCal but in South America. It happened on Halloween of 2018, when a system of massive thunderstorms boiled up over southern Brazil and spawned a single bolt stretching across 440 miles, from the Atlantic coast all the way into Argentina.

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