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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Here come the lightning ‘megaflashes’

A new eye in the sky is revealing monster lightning discharges, including a bolt that travelled more than 500 kilometres.
Lightning strikes across the skies over SW Oklahoma, 28 August 2014.

Lightning puts on a show in Oklahoma in 2014. A lightning bolt that split the skies above the state in 2017 covered a distance of more than 500 kilometres. Credit: Getty

A lightning-mapping instrument aboard one of the newest US weather satellites has spotted record-breaking electrical flashes in the sky — including a behemoth lightning bolt more than 500 kilometres long that blazed above Oklahoma two years ago.

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Nature 574, 600 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03221-z

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