A super-sized lightning bolt struck scientists as something special.

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.

A reanalysis of satellite data shows that a 2017 Texas-to-Missouri lightning megaflash stretched 829 kilometers and lasted 7.39 seconds.

A lightning “mega-flash” over the US Great Plains region stretching 829 kilometres, or around 515 miles, has been identified as the longest on record. The flash spanned five states, ranging ...

The October 2017 flash beat the previous world record—a 477-mile-long bolt above the Great Plains in April 2020—by 38 miles. It lit up the sky across an area that’s five times larger than ...