Technology helps set record straight on longest lightning | Register
On Hallowe’en in 2018, tremendous thunderstorms ripped across Brazil. A single monster-sized lightning bolt burst over the country’s southern tip, from the Atlantic coast to the edge of Argentina, stretching more than 440 miles, equivalent to the distance from London to Basel in Switzerland.
This epic “megaflash” of October 31, 2018 set a new world record for the single longest lightning bolt recorded, now confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Using new satellite technology, scientists confirmed that it was more than twice as long as the previous record, a bolt that was about 199 miles long as it blazed over Oklahoma on June 20, 2007. It’s not that lightning has been getting bigger in recent years, rather that the technology for monitoring it has
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