A jaw-dropping 515-mile lightning bolt lit up the skies from Texas to Kansas City, smashing previous records and reshaping our understanding of extreme weather. Thanks to advanced satellite tech, scientists like Randy Cerveny and Michael Peterson are uncovering the mechanics of "megaflash" lightning—rare,

Though it struck over the U.S. years ago, experts have only recently determined that a lightning bolt that a lightning flash that extended from Texas to Missouri back in October 2017 was actually the longest in recorded history.