“Lightning is a major hazard that claims many lives every year. It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves,” said Professor Randall Cerveny, rapporteur of Weather and Climate Extremes for WMO. Environmental extremes are living measurements of the power of nature, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments. “These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events. The findings were published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The longest duration megaflash had a previous duration of 16.73 seconds which was derived from a flash that developed continuously over northern Argentina on 4 March 2019, 0.37 seconds shorter than the new record. Both the previous and new record used the same maximum great circle distance methodology to measure flash extent. The new record for the longest detected megaflash distance is 60 kilometres more than the previous record, with a distance of 709 ± 8 km (440.6 ± 5 mi) across parts of southern Brazil on 31 October 2018. The greatest duration for a single lightning flash of 17.102 ± 0.002 seconds from the flash that developed continuously through a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on 18 June 2020.This is equivalent to the distance between New York City and Columbus Ohio in the United States or between London and the German city of Hamburg. The longest single flash that covered a horizontal distance of 768 ± 8 km (477.2 ± 5 miles) across parts of the southern United States on 29 April 2020. ![]() ![]() Geneva, 1st February 2022 (WMO) - The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established two new world records for megaflashes of lightning in notorious hotspots in North and South America.Īided by the latest satellite technology, WMO’s Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes, which maintains official records of global, hemispheric and regional extremes recognized:
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