515-Mile Lightning Bolt, as Big as 7,553 Football Fields, Breaks World Record

An electrical weather phenomenon conscionable collapsed a world record.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported connected July 31 that a megaflash has group a caller world grounds for lightning discharge distance.

The monolithic lightning bolt — stretching 515 miles — struck connected Oct. 22, 2017, and extended from eastbound Texas to Kansas City successful Missouri.

PEOPLE calculated that it was astir arsenic agelong arsenic 7,553 shot fields.

Compared to nan caller 515-mile world record, nan mean lightning bolt size is 10 to 12 miles, according to nan National Weather Service.

The erstwhile grounds was a 477-mile megaflash that struck from Texas to Mississippi successful April 2020, according to a July 2025 WMO video.

Researchers verified nan caller grounds utilizing outer technology. 

The caller findings, published successful nan Bulletin of nan American Meteorological Society, explained nan value of documenting megaflashes.

“Documenting utmost cases of megaflashes — wherever astir nan full electrified stratiform region successful storms spanning aggregate states is discharged each astatine erstwhile — is important for lightning physics to understand nan limits of what lightning successful expansive complaint reservoirs is tin of, and for lightning information by revealing nan maximum grade of lightning hazards from nan astir impactful individual flashes connected Earth,” scientists wrote.

Researchers continued successful nan recently published report: “Each caller utmost arena identified provides insights into nan context, locations, and environments conducive to expansive flashes that are basal to yet reply nan mobility of why definite organized convective systems nutrient megaflashes while different akin systems nutrient none.”