Earthquakes, forest fires, storms and hurricanes - we know that the natural world can be harsh. But sometimes the manifestations of his formidable disposition take extremely fantastic forms. For example, the Sinabung volcano in Indonesia, which two years ago erupted with such force that it gave rise to dark tornadoes, sometimes called "dusty devils."
Here are some more examples of scary and amazing weather phenomena that look like they were included in the budget of an exciting blockbuster.
Volcanic lightning
Looking at the picture, you might think that this is a cover for a rock band's album. Photographer Oliver Spult took it in 1995 from a safe distance from Mount Rinjani, Indonesia's second largest volcano.
Oliver Spalt / Wikimedia Commons
Catastrophic volcanic eruptions are fearsome in and of themselves, so adding “special effects” seems overkill. But sometimes, in the midst of smoke and ash, real lightning flashes, the formation of which is not fully understood. They can be a byproduct of what meteorologists call "dirty thunderstorms." Lightning is generated by the collision of high electrical potentials, represented by negatively charged ash particles and positively charged volcanic gases.
Although volcanic eruptions have been observed by mankind for thousands of years, their scientific research began only a few centuries ago. And it remains to be seen how exactly these incredible discharges break out.
Promotional video:
Fire tornado
We have already talked about volcanic whirlwinds - "dusty devils" of smoke and ash. Now meet their sparkling fiery brothers.
This stunning video was made by Australian filmmaker Chris Tangy in 2012 as he was looking for suitable filming locations in the Australian Northern Territory. According to him, it was one of several whirlwinds of fire, roaring like a jet fighter.
Such vortices can occur when a combination of strong wind and intense heat propels the fire upward into a towering vortex. Even firefighters who put out forest fires are afraid of them. They usually do not last long, but they can spread burning debris over fairly long distances.
Despite their appearance, they are not classified as tornadoes and are more like dusty whirlwinds … with one exception. In 2012, scientists announced they had found the first evidence of a firestorm caused by a thunderstorm and intense smoke from the 2003 fires in Australia's Canberra.
Like a real tornado, it broke tall trees in half, tore off roofs from houses, and intense (up to 240 km / h) horizontal winds picked up and carried away cars.
Thermal bursts
Heat bursts are invisible bursts of hot air that can turn a quiet and calm evening into a sultry storm.
They do not happen often, but when they do, they cause a temperature rise of several degrees in a very short time. One such event in South Africa was marked by skyrocketing temperatures - from 20 ° C to 40 ° C - in just five minutes.
Other registered changes are less drastic, but still noticeable. Here's an example from Kansas.
History books are full of extreme but poorly documented cases. Unconfirmed reports of a heat spike in Iran put the temperature up to 87 ° C, killing people and melting asphalt. According to other sources, again from places where there are no official meteorological stations, they forced car radiators to boil and dried crops in the fields.
This phenomenon, similar to a downward explosion, begins when a thunderstorm weakens over a layer of dry air that sinks and becomes hotter and drier as it approaches the ground. Once the air reaches the ground, it dissipates in all directions, producing winds in excess of 120 km / h that can damage buildings.
In most cases, heat bursts occur at night, are short-lived, and are more likely to occur during thunderstorm spring-summer seasons.
Monster waves
Fans of the reality show "Deadly Catch" know what it is about, thanks to the episode when the crab ship "Aleutian Ballad" was hit by an 18-meter wave. The ship managed to survive, although hundreds and thousands of other ships over the centuries met their demise along with a stray wave.
This wave was far from the highest ever recorded. In 1933, a 34-meter giantess hit an American tanker. According to theoretical estimates, its maximum height can reach 60 m.
Giant waves were seen in the waters of Canada, where the famous liner "Queen Elizabeth - 2" in 1995 had to "ride" a 27-meter monster near Newfoundland. In the same year, a wave of the same size became one of the first officially recorded after the flooding of an oil rig in the North Sea.
Despite all this, until the 1990s, they were considered fiction. Scientists now know that they are formed through the interaction of storm waves or along powerful ocean currents, but there are still several blank spots in this theory.
And while scientists are slowly getting to the bottom of these waves and how climate change is interacting with them, the European Space Agency in 2004 aimed their satellites at the oceans. According to their calculations, about 10 giant monsters are splashing in the waters of the Earth at any time.
Ball lightning
This weather phenomenon is much more mysterious than monster waves.
There are many stories of glowing balls appearing right in the room (YouTube is full of alleged eyewitness sightings). Oddly enough, everyone describes them differently: some say that the ball wandered around the room before bursting out. Others tell how he went through the metal wall of the plane, while the ship remained unharmed, or descended from the sky, cut off the telephone line, burned the walls and landed in the bathroom, where it went out.
Legends say that a fireball appeared to young Nicholas II and his grandfather when they attended church.
Only in the 1970s did scientists begin to recognize the phenomenon, not attributing it to hallucinations. There are a number of possible explanations. Basically, when conventional lightning strikes mineral-rich soil, it vaporizes some of the metals, causing a chain reaction with oxygen, emitting heat and light. The theory was not confirmed until in 2014, Chinese scientists accidentally caught fireball on a spectrographic camera. Now we have to wait for some other group of researchers to be lucky.
Animal rain
And finally, a few biblical motives. You may think that this is a sign of the apocalypse, but from time to time in some small town, residents see fish, frogs or other animals pouring from the sky.
The earliest mentions of such rains date back to past eras. The ancient Roman historian Pliny reported a hail of frogs in the first century AD. In the past decade, fish hail has been seen in England and fish rain in the dry and remote Australian Northern Territory, and tadpoles once rushed from the sky to the prefecture of Japan.
Canada Day in 1903 was marked by a rain of fish in Moose Joe, and in 1912, Lethbridge, Alberta, received a dose of beetle rainfall.
As you can see, rains from animals can pass in any corner of the planet. But there is one place in the world where this happens every year, for more than a century. This is the Yoro department in Honduras. The phenomenon even has its own name, Lluvia de peces de Yoro.
The fact that the land is covered with fish during the rainy season and that reports only come from second hand suggests that fish emerge from underground rivers when precipitated groundwater flows to the surface.
As for the rest of the stories, when the fish was seen exactly falling from the sky, the actual explanation may be as follows: tornadoes following along rivers or lakes take all aquatic life into themselves and keep them high in the air, moving further, and then return back to earth far from the original district.
This phenomenon was not officially recorded.