MicroFactzzz#0164 · 🌍 Strange Earth
Lightning Strikes This Lake Up to 300 Times an Hour, Almost Every Single Night of the Year
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela hosts some of the most frequent lightning storms on Earth — the phenomenon runs almost nonstop on most nights of the year.
Where the Catatumbo River meets Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, intense storms regularly form, with lightning that can strike several hundred times an hour.
Known as the "Catatumbo lighthouse," the phenomenon occurs on dozens of nights a month for most of the year and is driven by a specific combination of mountains, a warm lake, and moist air off the Caribbean Sea that creates ideal conditions for convective storms.
The lightning is visible from several hundred kilometers away and for centuries served sailors as a natural, free lighthouse for navigating the coast at night.
It's one of the most "electric" places on the planet — the annual number of lightning strikes in this region far outpaces the storm activity of most other regions in the world.
Sources
- General knowledge / encyclopedic sources
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