The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has certified a jaw-dropping new world record for the longest single lightning flash ever recorded. The lightning coursed a staggering 515 miles across the southern United States—travelling all the way from eastern Texas to near Kansas City,

A single flash of lightning that stretched across the Great Plains, from eastern Texas all the way to Kansas City, Missouri, turned out to be a staggering 515 miles long. A new report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society documented the new lightning record, which beat the previous title holder, a 477-mile bolt from April 2020.

Guinness World Records may be the go-to organization for measuring the extent of (sometimes dubious) human achievement, but for natural phenomena, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes sets the bar.