Some people are used to extreme weather conditions. This is the case for those who live in the area where the Catatumbo River meets Lake Maracaibo and has dark clouds covering it most of the year. For centuries, these clouds constantly crash into each other and cause violent lightning storms that can last up to ten hours and occur between 140 and 160 nights a year. They call it 'the never-ending lightning storm'. However, every cloud has a silver lining; this lightning activity produces nitrogen oxide which probably helps to restore the ozone layer. Another kind of rare lightning is ball lightning. This is a ball of brightly coloured light which usually occurs during thunderstorms but lasts longer than a lightning bolt. Sometimes the ball even explodes and leaves behind a smell, but the true cause of this phenomenon is a mystery. One sighting hit the news in 1984 when ball lightning entered a Russian aircraft, flew above the shocked passengers, travelled through the aircraft and passed silently out again leaving two holes in the plane.
Fire from the sky
We're all used to hearing about tornados, but imagine if a tornado was a whirling fire storm instead of a wind storm. A fire tornado or a 'fire devil' can happen when high temperatures from a wildfire mix with strong winds. They are usually about 300-450 metres high, but they can sometimes reach 1.6 km in height! A fire tornado made world news in 2010 in Brazil when astonished motorists watched one spin and burn its way through fields by a highway. In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan ignited the largest fire tornado in history, killing 38,000 people in 15 minutes. Luckily, fire tornadoes are very rare.
A watery tale
Have you ever heard the saying, it's raining cats and dogs?
Well, what about frogs, fish, jellyfish or even snakes? Believe it or not, there have been many stories throughout history of it raining animals. One explanation is that strong winds or a tornado could pick them up and drop them far away. The rain of fish has been happening every summer in the region of Yoro, Honduras, for over a century. Witnesses say that there is usually a violent storm, then afterwards there are hundreds of living fish on the ground which people take home, cook and eat! Many local people believe that this is a miracle, but some scientists disagree; they believe that the fish are from underground rivers and that the storms somehow bring them up above ground.