That depends. The average lightning bolt peaks at the terawatt range, so at least 1000 gigawatt and above.
However, this only occurs in microseconds; around 30 microseconds or so for normal lightning strikes. That's a really short duration; 1 second equals 1,000,000 microseconds.
Some say that the strongest EARTH based lightning is around 100,000 gigawatts at their peak; we don't really know since each lightning bolt tends to vary in power, and thousands occur everyday, making it impossible to track them all.
If you're looking for the strongest lightning bolt in the UNIVERSE, that would be even more impossible to calculate since lightning storms in places like Saturn are easily thousands of times stronger than their Earth based cousins.
The phrase "1.21 gigawatts" is popularized by the movie "Back to the Future" and is not a real unit of measurement. Lightning can vary in power, but the average lightning bolt delivers about 1 gigawatt of power, which is similar in magnitude but not directly equivalent to 1.21 gigawatts.
Fulmen is the Latin word for lightning bolt.
...Like a Bolt of Lightning was created on 2004-10-12.
Sheet lightning is when a lightning bolt is obscured by clouds and only illuminates the cloud layer, creating a diffuse light. A lightning bolt is the visible discharge of electricity between clouds or between a cloud and the ground, typically following a distinct path.
It's challenging to quantify the weakest lightning bolt, as lightning bolts can vary greatly in intensity. However, a "stepped leader" is one of the initial stages of lightning formation and could be considered one of the weakest forms of lightning discharge.
Only a flux capacitor and a bolt of lightning!
There are 72,000,000,000,000 watts in 72,000 giga watts.
1.21 gigawatts. Source: Doctor Emmitt Brown, Back to the Future
The phrase "1.21 gigawatts" is popularized by the movie "Back to the Future" and is not a real unit of measurement. Lightning can vary in power, but the average lightning bolt delivers about 1 gigawatt of power, which is similar in magnitude but not directly equivalent to 1.21 gigawatts.
A bolt of lightning can generate up to 1 billion watts of power.
A lightning bolt can carry up to 1 billion watts of power.
A lightning bolt can produce up to 1 billion watts of power.
An average bolt of lightning is about 5 miles long.
A typical lightning bolt releases about 1 billion joules of energy.
A typical lightning bolt releases about 1 billion joules of energy.
A lightning bolt can contain up to one billion kilowatts of electricity.
"Lightning Bolt" is the nickname for Usain Bolt