At the mouth of the Catatumbo River in Venezuela, a very unique mass of storm clouds swirls, creating the rare spectacle known as Catatumbo lightning. The storm occurs up to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day, and 280 times an hour.
These massive underwater caves, like this one in Belize, formed during past ice ages, when sea level was far lower than it is today and much of the seafloor was exposed to the elements. Blue holes were the target of erosion, which ended when they were once again submerged.
This rare and elusive scene is a meteorological event that occurs for a few seconds only when the sun starts to dip below or rise above the horizon. Meteorological conditions have to be just right to allow light from the sun to bend in the atmosphere and appear briefly as a green flash.
This is a vent, where natural gas escapes to the surface through cracks in the rocks. The flame it produces has burned ever since it was set alight in 1971. A similar flame in Iraq has burned for for over 4,000 years and is even mentioned in the Old Testament.
Volcanic plumes produce immense amounts of electrical charge and static. In rare cases, this can spark a violent lightning storm.
The Moeraki Boulders in New Zealand are huge natural spherical boulders that have formed at Koekohe Beach over time. These balls were originally formed under the sea floor in a process that saw sediment, such as sand, hardened into stone. Over 60 million years, coastal erosion revealed these creations to the world
The area of Hverir, Iceland is incredibly geothermally active, so much so that ghostly towers of steam and gas rise from bodies of water and mud as they boil. Combined with the Northern Lights, this place looks like an alien world.
Ice caves are temporary structures that form at the edge of glaciers when flowing water melts a hole into glaciers. The tightly packed ice has very few air bubbles and absorbs all light except for blue, giving the ice its unique color.
These colourful rock formations in China are the result of red sandstone and mineral deposits laid down over millions of years. Wind and rain then carved amazing shapes into the rock, forming natural pillars, towers, ravines, valleys, and waterfalls.
On their own, Monarch butterflies are a beautiful orange and black, but when they migrate in mass every year, they fill the sky with a swath of brilliance. When temperatures fall in October, millions of butterflies will travel up to 2,500 miles from North America towards Mexico, covering trees as they make their epic escape from winter.
These incredible clouds are extremely rare, because normally, the stratosphere is quite dry and clouds cannot form. But in extreme polar winters, there’s just enough moisture for these strange clouds to take form about 12 miles above Earth.
The sardine run in South Africa occurs from May to July every year, when billions of sardines move from cooler waters at Cape Point towards the East coast of South Africa. Groups of sardines are so large that they can be spotted by satellites and often measure more than 5 miles long, 1 mile wide and 100 feet deep.
These lens-shaped anomalies form when moist air flows over a mountain and piles into large and layered clouds. Due to their strange shape, these clouds are often mistaken for UFOs.
In October and November, the 120 million crabs that call Christmas Island home begin a mass migration to the ocean in hopes of mating. For around 18 days every year, traffic is halted as the roads run red with crabs edging their way to the coast.
Methane bubbles form in water when dead organic matter falls to the bottom, much to the delight of bacteria. When methane gets trapped in frozen water, it produces scenes like these. Just don’t light a match when these bubbles are freed.
Yes, those are thousands of spider webs. Fields like these ones in Australia are transformed when thousands upon thousands of spiders migrate across the land. This usually only occurs when spiders are fleeing floodwaters.
The sparkle in these waves in the islands of Maldives comes from marine microbes called phytoplankton that glow in the dark. The galaxy they paint across the shore is nothing short of breathtaking.
Mammatus clouds are pouches that form and hang underneath the base of a cloud. They occur very rarely when when air and clouds holding different levels of moisture mix, with the heavier one sinking below the lighter.
Asperatus Clouds are so rare that they were only classified as of 2009. We know little about them other than the fact that they look mesmerizing.
Some lakes have such a high salt content that if animals take a dip in the water, their bodies calcify (effectively turning into stone).
Rainbow eucalyptus trees in Australia have a unique, multicoloured bark, making the tree appear as if it were hand painted green, blue, purple, orange and maroon. This occurs because the trees shed patches of bark at different times throughout the year. This means that exposed areas of the tree age over different periods into an entire rainbow of colours.
These unusual flower fields form on thin sea ice when the atmosphere is far colder than the underlying ice. When the warmer, wet air and overlying cold air meet, they form these amazing crystals.