“It is an incredibly strange phenomenon,” he said. “We only discovered them 10 years ago, when we could use a particular set of technologies to detect the start and end locations of Lightning events.”
Megaflashes are not entirely rare, but they generally only occur in parts of the world where specific geographic and atmospheric conditions can produce the most serious thunderstorms, said Cerveny. In the large plains and through the midwest, for example, the hot and humid air of the Gulf of Mexico collided with a drier and colder northern air, creating high atmospheric instability.
When these conditions mix and produce serious storms, lightning megaflashs can occur. These extra-long lightning bolts have previously been observed in the United States, Argentina and south of France, and scientists think they can also occur in parts of China and Australia, according to Cerveny.
The 2017 megaflash was produced by a huge storm which covered a huge band of the United States, Texas in Iowa and Missouri. Although the megaflashes can extend over several states, they are formed at the top of the atmosphere and therefore rarely cause damage to the ground, said Cerveny.
“They measure more than 10,000 to 18,000 feet high, in the layers of an intermediary of a thunderstorm,” he said.
The flash of 515 miles long was described in a study published Thursday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
“These new discoveries highlight important public security concerns concerning electrified clouds which can produce flashes that are roaming extremely large distances and have a major impact on the aviation sector and can trigger forest fires,” said the secretary general of WMO, Celeste Saulo, in a press release.
The extreme conditions that generate them are a reminder of the power of powerful and dangerous lightning storms. In the United States, lightning kills around 20 people each year and injures hundreds of others, according to the meteorological service.
With the classification Thursday, the Lightning Flash 2017 now exceeds the previous world record five years ago of around 38 miles, according to WMO. This flash was unleashed on April 29, 2020 and sold 477.2 miles on the other side of the South of the United States
The 2017 megaflash was identified after scientists re -examined the archive measures taken when the storm occurred.
“When the original studies were carried out, we did not have the technology we have today,” said Cerveny. “Now we have this instrument on a meteorological satellite which very precisely detects lightning and can precisely determine where, how far and how long a flash event of Lightning takes place.”
Experts have said it is likely that there will be even longer megaflases found in the coming years, especially since satellite technologies improve the ability to detect them.
“Over time, while the data file continues to develop, we will be able to observe even the rarest types of extreme lightning on earth and study the general impacts of lightning on society,” said the main author of the study, Michael Peterson, an atmospheric scientist of the Secure Storms Research Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Météorological and Climatic Conditions Committee of OMO is the official registers of global, hemispherical and regional extremes, including for temperature, precipitation, wind, hail, lightning, tornadoes and tropical cyclones.
