Lightning as seen from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on NOAA's GOES-16 satellite from April 29, 2020. One of the lightning flashes within this thunderstorm complex was found by the World Meteorological Organization to be the longest flash on record that covered a horizontal distance of 477 miles. (Image credit: NOAA)
Shocking! Within this cluster of storms, a single lightning bolt captured by NOAA satellites was recently certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the world’s longest flash on record. The horizontal distance of the bolt stretched 477 miles, from the central coast of Texas to southern Mississippi, when it flashed on April 29, 2020. This beats the previous record of 440.6 miles for a lightning strike across southern Brazil in 2018. See the WMO press release offsite link.
