The United Nations announced Tuesday that a single flash of lightning in the United States about two years ago set a new global record by cutting across the sky for nearly 770 kilometres.
On April 29, 2020, a new record for the longest detected megaflash was set in the southern United States, stretching 768 kilometres (477.2 miles) across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), this is similar to the distance between New York City and Columbus, Ohio, or between London and Hamburg, Germany.
That lightning bolt zigzagged 60 kilometres further than the previous record, achieved on October 31, 2018 in southern Brazil.
A new world record for the duration of a lightning flash was also announced by the WMO’s committee of experts on weather and climate extremes.
On June 18, 2020, a single flash that evolved continuously during a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina lasted 17.1 seconds, which was 0.37 seconds longer than the previous record set on March 4, 2019, also in northern Argentina.
‘More extremes’ –
In a statement, Randall Cerveny, the WMO rapporteur for weather and climate extremes, remarked, “These are remarkable records from single lightning flash incidents.”
Environmental extremes, he noted, are “live evaluations of nature’s force, as well as scientific advancement in being able to make such assessments.”
In recent years, the technology used to identify the length and duration of lightning flashes has advanced substantially, allowing for records that were previously unattainable.
The previous “megaflash” records, from 2018 and 2019, were the first to be verified using new satellite lightning photography technology, and they were both greater than double the prior ground-based records.
“It’s conceivable that much higher extremes exist, and that as lightning detection equipment develops, we’ll be able to see them,” Cerveny said.
The new record hits occurred in the Great Plains of North America and the La Plata basin of South America, which are renowned as hotspots for so-called Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) thunderstorms that permit megaflashes, according to the WMO.
The new marks were achieved during active and large-scale thunderstorms, making them significantly more dangerous.
In the statement, WMO chief Petteri Taalas added, “Lightning is a severe hazard that claims many lives every year.”
Only large structures with wiring and plumbing, or fully enclosed, metal-topped cars, according to the WMO, are lightning-safe.
Temperature, rainfall, and wind are just a few of the weather and climate-related indicators that the UN agency keeps track of.
The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes holds all of these records.
There are presently two more lightning-related extremes in the archive.
One is for the most persons killed by a single direct lightning strike, which occurred in Zimbabwe in 1975 when 21 people huddled for protection in a shack that was struck.
The other is for an indirect strike in Dronka, Egypt, in 1994, when lightning struck a group of oil tanks, causing burning oil to flood the town, killing 469 people.
