Lightning is a familiar sight in stormy skies, but a new report has revealed just how far some bolts can travel — in one case, more than 500 miles. That astonishing bolt sparked to life in eastern ...

Our eyes deceive us when lightning strikes like a giant spark cracking the sky in two. That giant spark is only as big around as a golf ball. Like everything else in nature, it happens for a reason.

Scientists have long understood why lightning forms, but the atomic processes at the core of the phenomenon have remained largely a mystery—especially the strange mechanics behind terrestrial ...

The idiom "out of the blue," used to describe something unexpected, is derived from a potentially deadly weather phenomenon —a "bolt from the blue." According to the National Weather Service, a "bolt ...

Lightning flashes streak across the sky in the German countryside. One large flash is mostly horizontal, another one is vertical. Sometimes lightning bolts can stretch hundreds of miles horizontally.

A lightning "megaflash" that zipped across five U.S. states has set a new record for the longest ever detected. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s ...

An enormous, 515-mile-long flash of lightning that crossed at least three states has been named the longest in recorded history in the world. The 2017 “megaflash” stretched from eastern Texas to near ...

A super-sized lightning bolt struck scientists as something special. Now, researchers have confirmed that a lightning strike from 2017 has broken a world record. A single flash of lightning that ...