On a stormy pre-dawn morning in late 2017, a lightning bolt near Dallas unzipped the sky, racing northeast through the clouds of a massive storm system to set a record for the longest distance traveled by a lightning bolt in recorded history.

Scientists July 31 announced the discovery of the world's longest lightning flash ever detected – a whopping 515-mile-long bolt that blasted across central U.S. skies from Dallas to Kansas City in October 2017. In East Coast terms, that's equivalent to the distance from New York City to Charlotte, N.C.