The most stunning natural phenomena on Earth

1. Aurora Borealis

The Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights, is a natural light display caused by collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere.

The phenomenon is usually seen in northern regions like Canada, Alaska, Norway, Finland, Greenland and Iceland but has also appeared further south in Scotland and even New Orleans in the USA.

The spectacle can also be seen in the southern hemisphere where they are called the Aurora Australis. However, they are far harder to access. Outside of continental Antarctica, the Southern Lights can only be seen from southernmost New Zealand, Argentina and Australia.

2. Catatumbo lightning, Venezuela

This ‘eternal storm’ of lightning occurs on 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour over Lake Maracaibo, usually over the area where the Catatumbo River flows into the lake.

After appearing continually for centuries, the lightning strikes ceased from January to April 2010, possibly due to drought. This raised fears that it was extinguished permanently but it reappeared several months later. Scientists say that Catatumbo is normal lightning that just happens to occur far more than anywhere else due to local topography and wind patterns.

3. Horsetail Fall, USA

Every February, Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park is illuminated by the setting sun. If conditions are right, it creates the illusion of a ‘firefall’ where the waterfall glows orange and red, giving the impression of fire.

Photographers flock to the site, but the ideal picture requires a balance of forces: enough moisture to fuel the 1,000ft waterfall, clear skies to let the light through and the right angle for the sun to hit the famous falls.

Due to the popularity of the phenomenon, day-use reservations are required for three weekends in February during the event.

4. Cloud formations

The British tend to nurse an aversion to clouds. You see, we rarely get that wispy, brilliant-white, cotton candy cloud that glides through warmer climes. No, ours are grey, bulging and ominous. They threaten to burst over July barbecues and preside over weddings like harbingers of doom. What no one told us is that it doesn’t have to be this way…

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Asperitas, Mammatus and lenticular clouds

Asperitas clouds are a natural phenomena that look like rippling waves. These are thought to appear in the aftermath of convective thunderstorms. Mammatus clouds look like bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud while lenticular clouds look like flying saucers. In fact, it’s said that these clouds are one of the most common explanations for UFO sightings across the world.

5. Sea of stars

The island of Vaadhoo in the Raa Atoll of the Maldives is famous for its ‘sea of stars’. At night, the sea is lit by marine bioluminescence, generated by plankton known as dinoflagellates.

When the plankton are stressed by the movement of the sea, they emit light as a defence mechanism in a similar way to some fireflies. As the waves increase in intensity, so too does the light, creating the illusion of a sea of stars.

6. Lake Bubbles, Canada

These formations beneath Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada, look picturesque but are actually frozen pockets of methane, a highly flammable gas.

Caused by the decomposition of organic matter like plants, animals and microbes, the flammable gas travels closer to the surface in warmer months, eventually escaping into the atmosphere. The process is harmless as long as you’re not lighting up close by.

7. Light pillars

Light pillars are an optical phenomenon in which narrow beams of light seem to extend from the sky to the ground.

These occur when light from the sun or moon is reflected upwards by ice crystals that form in frosty air. For ice crystals to form, the conditions need to be extremely calm and cold, without wind. For the light pillars to show, the ice crystals need to be near the ground.

8. Waterspouts

Waterspouts are like tornadoes but occur over water and are usually accompanied by high winds and seas, large hail and frequent dangerous lightning.

Waterspouts are spotted in the Florida Keys more than any other place in the world. They have been reported in Europe, New Zealand and even Antarctica, but occur most commonly in the tropics and subtropical areas.

9. Hessdalen Lights, Norway

These strange orbs of light hovering over a valley in central Norway have baffled scientists for three decades.

Sometimes as big as cars, the orbs have (understandably) triggered numerous reports of UFO sightings. Some orbs drift gently through the sky for up to two hours while others flash white or blue and streak through the valley, disappearing in seconds.

10. Turquoise ice, Russia

Lake Baikal, located in eastern Siberia in Russia, is one of the largest and deepest lakes in the world, holding an enormous one-fifth of the world’s freshwater.

In March, weather conditions cause cracks and ice hummocks to form, which in turn create a stunning natural phenomenon: brilliant turquoise ice shards woven into the masses of broken ice.

11. Volcanic lightning

As if active volcanoes weren’t scary enough, we now learn that some are so ferocious, that they actually produce lightning during a volcanic eruption!

Known as a ‘dirty thunderstorm’, this phenomenon is caused by electrical charges generated when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in a volcanic plume collide and produce static charges, just as ice particles collide in regular thunderstorms.

12. Snow chimneys

Snow chimneys are a type of fumarole; vents in the Earth’s crust which allow steam and gases to escape from volcanoes.

In Arctic areas, as soon as the steam leaves one of these vents, it freezes, eventually forming massive snow chimneys like this one on Mount Erebus in Antarctica.

13. Fire whirls

If there were ever a mark of the Devil, surely this would be it. A fire whirl, also known as a ‘fire devil’ or ‘fire tornado’ happens when intense rising heat and turbulent wind conditions combine to form a whirling twister made of flame and ash.

According to National Geographic, the fiery core inside the swirling wind is usually one to three feet wide and five to ten stories tall and, at the extreme, can stretch dozens of feet wide and more than a hundred stories tall. Terrifying.

14. SAILING STONES

Death Valley National Park in California, USA, is one of the hottest places on Earth. On 10th July 1913, Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley registered a sizzling 56.7°C (134°F)! The Valley is also home to picture-perfect sand dunes, water-sculpted canyons and extinct volcanic craters.

However, perhaps its most notable feature is its mysterious sailing stones, a geological phenomenon where rocks move along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

At Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa, the tracks have been studied since the early 1900s, yet the cause long remained a mystery. In 2014, timelapse video footage showed the rocks moving at low wind speeds within the flow of thin melting sheets of ice or ice rafts. The results suggest the stones are floating rather than sailing.

15. Pink Lakes

Pink lakes are found in many places around the world. The natural phenomena are usually created when there is an unusually high salt concentration – much higher than seawater – in the lake. The pinkish hue is created when there is a salt-tolerant algae present, such as the green algae Dunaliella salina.

We’ve seen pink lakes in Bonaire, Western Australia and Mexico with varying degrees of ‘pinkness’. Local conditions such as the time of year, the weather and even if or when the salt has been harvested can influence the ferocity of the colour.