A lightning bolt that shot across the sky from East Texas to near Kansas City, Mo., during a 2017 thunderstorm has officially been named the longest ever recorded on Earth. The bolt-a rare phenomenon known as a "megaflash"-traveled 515 miles horizontally across the Great Plains.

A megaflash is a lightning discharge of very long distance and/or duration that satellites can detect. A reanalysis of a megaflash from October 2017 has been deemed a new world record.