Mondo Knows Facts
The longest lightning flash stretched 768 kilometres
A single flash across the southern United States set the record in 2020
Satellite instruments measure lightning by its extent rather than by eye, and in April 2020 they recorded a flash spanning 768 kilometres across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. A separate flash over Uruguay and Argentina set the duration record at 17.1 seconds. Both were confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization.
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Tags: lightning, weather, records
The longest lightning flash stretched 768 kilometres: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A single flash across the southern United States set the record in 2020. The figure is taken from NOAA, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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