The world records for the longest lightning bolt and longest-lasting lightning flash have both been smashed.
This week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said a bolt that lit up the skies over Brazil on October 31, 2018, was 709km long - almost the length of the North Island, or the distance between London and Switzerland.
A time span of a lightning flash over Argentina on March 4, 2019, has been confirmed at 16.73 seconds.
"These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events," said Prof Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur of Weather and Climate Extremes for WMO.
"Environmental extremes are living measurements of what nature is capable of, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments. It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves."
The new records are more than double the previous known longest flashes, in distance and time, which used to be held by the United States and France respectively.
A 321km bolt was recorded in Oklahoma in 2007, and a 7.74-second flash in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France, in 2012.
The older records were confirmed using "ground-based Lightning Mapping Array networks", according to the WMO, which is part of the United Nations. As technology improves, it's expected they'll be able to confirm even longer lightning bolts using satellites.
The record for most people killed in a single lightning strike remains 21, when a fatal bolt hit a hut in Zimbabwe in 1975.
In 1994, 469 people died after lightning hit oil tanks in Dronka, Egypt, flooding the town with burning oil.
