Scientists have revealed that a lightning bolt that occurred over a swath of the southern U.S. in 2017 was the single longest lightning strike ever recorded. At 515 miles long, the flash was the equivalent distance from Boston to the Outer Banks of North Carolina,

The record-setting lightning megaflash occurred on October 22, 2017, stretching approximately 829 kilometers, or 515 miles, from Eastern Texas to near Kansas City, Missouri, within a storm system over the Great Plains.