15 Natural Phenomena You Didn't Know About

1. Dirty thunderstorms, aka volcanic lightning, occur when lightning is produced in a volcanic plume.

Martin Rietze / Via mrietze.com

They look like the entrance to Hell!

Carlos Gutierrez / UPI Photo / Landov

2. Oh wait, here’s The Door to Hell, a gas fire in Turkmenistan accidentally ignited by scientists in 1971 and still burning. Oops.

Flickr: flydime / Creative Commons

3. Flammable ice bubbles: frozen bubbles of methane, trapped beneath Alberta’s Lake Abraham.

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4. The Catumbo Lightning, which occurs during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per night and up to 280 times per hour.

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5. Christmas Island’s Red Crabs: Each year an estimated 43 million land crabs migrate to lay their eggs in the ocean.

Imago / Barcroft Media

Authorities close most of the island’s roads during the migration, which normally takes at least a week.

alienthain via Compfight / Creative Commons

alienthain via Compfight / Creative Commons

6. Monarch butterflies: The eastern North American population is notable for its southward late summer/autumn migration from the USA and Canada to Mexico, covering thousands of kilometers.

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No individual butterfly lives through the whole migration. Female monarchs lay eggs and their offspring continue the migrations.

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7. Surreal spiderwebs: Fleeing torrential floodwaters near Wagga Wagga, Australia, thousands of spiders cover fields with cobwebs.

Reuters / Daniel Munoz

Reuters / Daniel Munoz

8. Namibia’s mysterious Fairy Circles: Studies suggest that a sand termite is responsible for their creation.

Norbert Juergens / University of Hamburg

9. Underwater crop circles in the ocean off Japan: created by a male pufferfish in order to woo females.

Yoji Ookata / NHK / Via ookatayouji.amaminchu.com

10. Spherical boulders in New Zealand: exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them by coastal erosion.

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11. The Great Blue Hole: a large submarine sinkhole off the coast of Belize, over 300m across and 124m deep.

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12. The Black Sun: Huge flocks of up to 50,000 starlings form in areas of the UK just before sundown during mid-winter. They are known as murmurations.

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13. The Sardine Run: occurs from May through July when billions of sardines move north along the east coast of South Africa. Their sheer numbers create a feeding frenzy along the coastline.

Flickr: mycoffeemug / Creative Commons

Flickr: mycoffeemug / Creative Commons

14. The Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland: an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption.

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15. Sailing stones in Death Valley, USA: a geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

Flickr: mandj98 / Creative Commons

Flickr: thomashawk / Creative Commons