Seven Bizarre And Beautiful Natural Phenomena

Published August 11, 2011
Updated April 24, 2017

Man-made miracles, move over! These beautiful natural phenomena prove that Mother Nature is the ultimate creator:

Fire Rainbows

Fire Rainbow
Rainbow Fire
Fire Rainbow Photograph
Beautiful Natural Phenomena Fire Rainbow
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The Fire Rainbow is the colloquial term for the atmospheric phenomenon known as circumhorizontal arc. This occurs when the sun is more than 58 degrees above the horizon, and the light emitted passes through cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds, which are made up of hexagonal ice crystals, must be shaped like plates parallel to the ground for effect to occur.

When the sun's light enters the cloud vertically, the light leaves the ice crystal from the bottom, and the crystal bends the light to form the rainbow arc. The effect is similar to what you would witness when a light is filtered through a prism.

Black Sun

Black Sun
Black Sun Birds
Sun Black
Black Sun Denmark
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The Black Sun occurs in Denmark just before sunset in spring and autumn. The term refers to the instances when an enormous flock of European starlings (numbering in the hundreds of thousands), who gather from varying corners, creating an amazing pattern in the sky, almost entirely blocking the sun.

Catatumbo Lightning

Lightning Catatumbo
Catatumbo Lightening
Catatumbo Lighting
Catatumbo Lightning
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Catatumbo Lighting occurs on the mouth of the Catatumbo River at Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. This atmospheric delight, which creates incessant, powerful flashes of lightning, occurs when a mass of storm clouds forms 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 1 million electrical discharges per year.

author
All That's Interesting
author
A New York-based publisher established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science to share stories that illuminate our world.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.