by A huge lightning flash of 515 miles, which crossed at least three countries, was called the longest in the history of the world.
The 2017 “Megaflash” stretched from Osttexas to Kansas City – a distance that, according to the World Meteorological Organization, would take at least eight hours by car or 90 minutes. In comparison, the average flash usually measures less than 10 miles, according to the National Weather Service.
The WMO, an agency within the United Nations, announced on Thursday that it certified the megaflash as the longest flash of lightning. It met on October 22, 2017 during a heavy storm that hit a large part of the large levels.
A megaflash is a huge flash that moves major distances from its original point, said Randall Cerveny, professor of geographical sciences at Arizona State University and member of the WMO committee, which confirmed the new recording.
Visualization of a megaflash that expanded 515 miles from NASA and NOAA data. (Michael Peterson / Gtri)
“It’s an incredibly strange phenomenon,” he said. “We only discovered it 10 years ago when we could find the start and finish locations of the speed camera events with a certain series of technologies.”
Megaflashes are not entirely unusual, but they usually only appear in parts of the world in which specific geographical and atmospheric conditions can cause the hardest thunderstorms, said Cerveny. In the large levels and in the middle west, for example, the warm and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with dry, colder air from the north, which creates a strong atmospheric instability.
If these conditions mix and produce heavy storms, flash can occur. These extra long flashes have already been observed in the USA, Argentina and southern France, and according to Cerveny, scientists also believe in parts of China and Australia.
The 2017 Megaflash was produced by an immense storm that covered a huge part of the USA from Texas to Iowa and Missouri. Although Megaflashs can extend over several conditions, they form up in the atmosphere and so rarely cause damage to the ground, said Cerveny.
“They are over 10,000 to 18,000 feet high in the upper to medium layers of a thunderstorm,” he said.
The composite satellite image mapping of the Megaflash record. Cloud-to-of-of-of-them-of-gory flash are displayed with symbols that are colored by polarity. Blue for negative and red for positive. (Michael Peterson / Gtri)
The 515 miles long Lightning Bolt was described in a study published in the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on Thursday.
“These new findings underline important concerns about public security about electrified clouds that can produce flashes that cover extremely large distances and have a major impact on the aviation sector and can trigger forest fires,” said WMO General Secretary Celeste Saullo in an accompanying explanation.
The extreme conditions that you produce remind you of how strong and dangerous flash storms can be. In the USA, Lightning kills around 20 people every year and, according to the weather service, violates hundreds.
With the classification on Thursday, the Lightning Flash 2017 surpassed the previous world record, which was set up by about 38 miles five years ago. This flash was unleashed on April 29, 2020 and implemented over 477.2 miles over parts of the southern United States
The Megaflash 2017 was identified after the scientists examined archive measurements during the Sturm.
“When the original studies were carried out, we didn’t have the technology that we have today,” said Cerveny. “Now we have this instrument on a weather satellite that recognizes lightning exactly and determine exactly where, how far and how long a speedster event takes place.”
Experts said it was probably even longer megaflashes in the coming years, especially since satellite technologies improve the ability to recognize them.
“Over time, if the data recording continues to expand, we can also observe the rarest types of extreme lightning on earth and examine the broad effects of lightning on society,” said the senior author of Study, Michael Peterson, an atmospheric scientist in the serious Storms Research Center at Georgia Institute of Technology.
The WMO committee for weather and climate extremes keeps official records of global, hemispheric and regional extremes, including temperature, precipitation, wind, hail, flash, tornados and tropical cyclones.
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
