Widespread misinformation brewing with record "longest lightning strike"

[Dan Robinson]

Looks like we have a new lightning myth being generated by the report of the 200-mile-long record lightning strike in Oklahoma. News stories are propagating the misinformation that lightning can travel 200 miles *from* a storm, and that the "traditional safety advice needs to be rethought".

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/09/15/world-lightning-strike-records/90418046/

The record-distance lightning discharge was in an electrified stratiform precip area. In other words, it was a lightning discharge *within* a large storm cloud. These "trailing stratiform regions" are very common with large squall lines, which can themselves be hundreds of miles long.



Long horizontal discharges in the dozens of miles are very common within these. Chasers see them all the time!

The news stories are making it sound like lightning can arc into clear air 200 miles from a thunderstorm, which is false. 20-30 miles is likely the maximum distance for those events. This example from Australia is the longest I've seen documented, this is probably on the order of 15-20 miles at best:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lou1003/17035011486

 

[rdale]

Good find - I hated the implication that we needed to wait hours after a storm from some of the safety experts in there. Have you seen the actual paper?

 

[Jeff Duda]

The article itself does not use any sort of language that would suggest to me the person who wrote it misunderstood the information. Now if someone links to THAT article and goes beyond what it says to imply incorrectly that a strike can hit 200 miles from a storm, then that's a problem beyond the article posted.

 

[rdale]

I think it's the comment stream from the researcher that has people wondering...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4dc6...g-bolts-oklahoma-france-deemed-worlds-longest

 

[Jeff Duda]

Oh okay. Well that's a completely different article than the one initially linked to. Yeah, I see the misinformation there. I would guess that a pretty high fraction of ST members here will understand that this "discovery" (that happened almost 10 years ago, btw) really represents nothing new to be worried about. As a community we'd be better off heading this off on our individual social media accounts as we'd collectively have a larger reach there.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I posted an article on my site with a radar image of the MCS that produced the discharge in question, along with some examples of the type of lightning:

http://stormhighway.com/lightning_200_miles_long_myth.php

 

[TJKLECKNER]

Now Weather Nation jumped on the train

 

[rdale]

That appears to be correct. As long as it doesn't mention a "strike"