Monday, September 26, 2011

NATURAL PHENOMEN … CATATUMBO LIGHTNING

 

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CATATUMBO LIGHTNING

The Catatumbo Lighting occurs on the mouth of the Catatumbo River at Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela.

It is an atmospheric delight, which creates incessant, powerful flashes of lightning.

The phenomenon occurs because of a mass of storm clouds that form a voltage arc more than three miles high. The incessant storm clouds are the result of strong winds blowing across the lake and the surrounding plains, colliding with the high mountain ridges of the surrounding Andes, Perija Mountains and Meridas Cordillera.

The lightning is visible 140 to 160 nights a year, for ten hours per day, and up to 280 times every hour. This equates to over a million electrical discharges per year.

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