Record 515 Mile Megaflash!

[toobfreak]

Under extremely rate conditions, a bolt of lightning from a storm can travel more than ten miles from the storm, a limit which most bolts fall under, more than ten miles, and if it travels more than 60 miles, it becomes a megaflash.

This one traveled a confirmed 515 miles, from a location in east Texas up to a location near Kansas City Missouri. How is this possibly? It appears to take a large storm front. Under the right conditions, a lightning bolt travels between clouds from thunderhead to thunderhead but in doing so, now exceeds the dielectric potential of the next storm cloud, and so jumps to that one. With just the right conditions, this can set up chain lightning much like a set of dominoes where one striking causes the next to strike and the next and then the next, and on and on, with each cloud just below the discharge potential, now exceeded when the lightning from the previous cloud adds its electrons, then handing off the surplus to the next cloud.

I've seen lightning effects ripple across the sky jumping from cloud to cloud in waves and patterns, but in this case, a lightning strike in east Texas set up a domino effect and traveled 515 miles all the way up to Missouri in seconds before stopping, setting off a number of cloud to ground strikes along the way. Proof once again that lightning can strike clear out of nowhere and that the risks of a lightning bolt from a thunderstorm are often greater than they appear, lingering long after the storm seems to have passed.

The equipment and science for such measurements are only about 10 years old so they expect even longer lightning strikes detected as they go back through both old and new data.

A massive lightning ‘megaflash’ set a world record — it stretched for a whopping 515 miles

A super-sized lightning bolt struck scientists as something special.

nypost.com

 

[1srelluc]

I saw a "thick" lightning bolt last week. It struck a big Oak on the ridge across from me. I doubt if it really was that thick but it looked like it was 8' wide. It impressed the hell out of me.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Global warming is obviously to blame. [/sarcasm]

 

[toobfreak]

I saw a "thick" lightning bolt last week. It struck a big Oak on the ridge across from me. I doubt if it really was that thick but it looked like it was 8' wide. It impressed the hell out of me.

I'm not sure the width of the actual electron steam but it isn't very wide. That 8' wide glow you saw, part of that was probably natural diffusion of the bright light from the glare, but the rest of it was actually the plasma surrounding the bolt's electromagnetic field--- the temperature of the bolt is quite hot and the plasma is electrically charged with high voltage which diffuses out into the open air giving off a glow.

Put simply: had you been within 4-6 feet of that bolt where it hit, you likely would have been knocked off your ass and possibly killed.

Actually, had you been standing there, it likely would have altered the bolt and it might have struck you instead, or at least put out feelers to include you in the discharge path.