The world's longest lightning record of 768 km was set

BEIJING, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- The World Meteorological Organization reported on February 1 that a lightning bolt spanning three U.S. states with a horizontal distance of 768 kilometers was the single longest lightning bolt ever detected, nearly 60 kilometers longer than the previous record.

According to the World Meteorological Organization's statement, a new record lightning bolt occurred on April 29, 2020, spanning the U.S. states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The single longest lightning bolt previously detected occurred in southern Brazil on October 31, 2018.

The World Meteorological Organization also reported that in a thunderstorm in Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18, 2020, a lightning bolt lasted 17.1 seconds, setting a new record for the duration of a single lightning bolt, 0.37 seconds longer than the previous record. A lightning bolt that struck northern Argentina on March 4, 2019, previously "held" the record.

This is the lightning over Mount Sinapun, photographed in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra on August 23, 2020. (Xinhua News Agency, photo by Mirza)

Landdale Chervene, chief rapporteur on weather and climate extremes at the World Meteorological Organization, said these weather extremes are not only a vivid reflection of the forces of nature, but also advances in measurement methods. As detection technology evolves, he said, it's possible to observe greater extreme lightning.

The researchers initially measured lightning with the help of a ground-based network of "lightning mapping arrays." The longest and longest lightning bolts that occurred between 2018 and 2019 were measured by satellite imaging technology, resulting in more than twice the lightning extremes measured by previous ground-based technologies. (Ou Sa)