UN's weather agency records 700-km 'Megaflash' lightning; calls it "Extraordinary"
UN's weather agency has recently found its longest lightning bolt ever recorded. The 700-km long lightning bolt has broken all previous records. Find out
On Thursday i.e. June 25, 2020, The UN's weather agency announced the longest lightning bolt on record. In a single flash, the lightening reportedly covered 435 miles distance above the ground. This is considered the longest lightning ever recorded in human history.
Brazil's lightning bolt named as the longest lightning ever recorded
On October 31, 2018, a lightning bolt flashed in the sky in Brazil. It was hard to trail this more than 700 km long mega flash. The distance that the lightning covered is somewhat similar to the distance between Boston and Washington DC in the United States, or between London and Basel, Switzerland, as per the statement given by the World Meteorological Organization.
WMO's committee of experts on weather and climate extremes also reported a new world record for the duration of a lightning flash, with a single flash that developed continuously over northern Argentina on March 4, 2019, lasting for a full 16.73 seconds. These new records denoted as the "mega flash" records were verified with new satellite lightning imagery technology. The WMO said that the current records are more than double the previous known record-holders.
According to WMO, the previous record for the longest detected distance for a single lightning flash which was measured on June 20, 2007, was 321 kilometres (199 miles) in the US state of Oklahoma. However, it also mentioned that the previous duration on record was 7.74 seconds, measured on August 30, 2012, in southern France, it said.
700 km longest lightning bolt termed in 'Extraordinary records'
The chief rapporteur in the WMO expert committee, Randall Cerveny, said in the statement that the new measurements reveal "extraordinary records from single lightning flash events". He also mentioned that "It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves".
The UN agency reportedly said that the technological advancements hailed the mapping of such weather wonders. The space-based lightning mapping technology allows researchers to measure such events in a "flash extent and duration continuously over broad geospatial domains". This has also aided in the observations of extremes in lightning occurrence, known as 'mega-flashes'.
According to Michael J. Peterson's statement who is from the Space and Remote Sensing Group of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, 'mega flashes' are defined as horizontal mesoscale lightning discharges that reach hundreds of kilometres in length.
The UN agency occasionally reveals quirky weather-related milestones, like in 2016 revealing a record wave measurement of a behemoth that towered 19 metres (62.3 feet)—taller than a six-storey building—above the North Atlantic. All such records are stored in the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes.
Published By : Yash Tripathi
Published On: 26 June 2020 at 18:28 IST