I admit it, I take a lot for granted. Especially the millions of daily miracles that happen in nature. Over the last few years, I’ve grown to really appreciate nature now that I have young kids.
Young kids find nature awe-inspiring. My boys can spend hours in the forest or on the beach appreciating the smallest details and creatures. I love that about kids and fortunately a little of that rubbed off on me.
While all of nature truly is amazing, there are some rare natural moments that you’d be very lucky to see. We list out many of them below… maybe you’ll get lucky (except for being inside the eye of a tornado – that’s not on everyone’s bucket list).
1. Formation of Lenticular Clouds
Actually this type of cloud can be found anywhere on Earth, provided the conditions are right for its formation. Lenticular clouds, technically known as altocumulus standing lenticularis, are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction.
Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. Under certain conditions, long strings of lenticular clouds can form, creating a formation known as a wave cloud.
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Lenticular clouds have been mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs) because these clouds have a characteristic lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape. They don’t usually form and only happen under rare conditions. Imagine having the chance to get a glimpse of this amazing cloud formation.
2. Frost Flower
This flower is one of the most beautiful of its kind. It can be found anywhere on a cold morning provided the conditions are right. As beautiful as it is rare, a frost flower is created in autumn or early winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants or occasionally wood.
This extrusion creates wonderful patterns that curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance. As the temperature gets to freezing or below, the sap in the stem of the plants will expand. As it does so, the outer layer of the stem comes under increasing pressure and microscopically thin cracks, known as linear fissures, begin to form.
These will finally give way under the pressure of the sap and split open. Water is continuously being drawn up the plant’s stem while the ground remains unfrozen. It travels up the plants’ external stem and reaches the split or splits.
As it does so, it oozes slowly out and it freezes. Yet more water is coming behind it. This new water reaches the cracks and it too freezes, pushing the previous slither of ice away from the stem. In this manner, the amazing ‘petals’ that you see in these pictures are formed.
3. Supercell
Supercells can occur anywhere in the world under the right pre-existing weather conditions, but they are most common in the Great Plains of the United States in an area known as Tornado Alley and in the Tornado Corridor of Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil.
The most threatening and deadliest of all thunderstorms, a supercell is characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone: a deep, persistently rotating updraft. For this reason, these storms are sometimes referred to as rotating thunderstorms. Supercells are often isolated from other thunderstorms and can dominate the local weather up to 32 kilometers (20 mi) away.
Supercells can be any size – large or small, low or high topped. They usually produce copious amounts of hail, torrential rainfall, strong winds, and substantial downbursts. Supercells are one of the few types of clouds that typically spawn tornadoes within the mesocyclone, although only 30% or fewer do so.
A supercell is basically a stronger, more tornado-enabled version of a regular storm cell. This is because—much like tornadoes—supercells have the tendency to spin around a lot, but also—and more importantly—because supercells can actually create tornadoes.
4. Volcanic Lightning
This can happen during volcanic eruptions. A dirty thunderstorm (also known as volcanic lightning) is a weather phenomenon that is related to the production of lightning in a volcanic plume. A famous image of the phenomenon was photographed by Carlos Gutierrez and occurred in Chile above the Chaiten Volcano.
Other instances have been reported above Alaska’s Mount Augustine volcano, and Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Volcanic lightning, researchers hypothesize, is the result of charge-separation. As positively charged ejecta makes it’s way skyward, regions of opposite but separated electrical charges take shape.
A lightning bolt is nature’s way of balancing the charge distribution. The same thing is thought to happen in regular thunderstorms. Smaller eruptions tend to be accompanied by more diminutive storms, which can be difficult to spot through thick clouds of ash. What’s more, lightning activity is highest during the beginning stages of an eruption, making it all the more challenging to capture on film.
5. Fire Rainbow
Fire rainbows can only be seen in locations north of 55°N or south of 55°S. Fire rainbows are neither fire, nor rainbows, but are so-called because of their brilliant pastel colors and flame-like appearance.
Technically they are known as a circumhorizontal arc, an ice halo formed by hexagonal, plate-shaped ice crystals in high-level cirrus clouds. The halo is so large that the arc appears parallel to the horizon, hence the name. Brightly colored circumhorizontal arcs occur mostly during the summer and between particular latitudes.
When the sun is very high in the sky, sunlight entering flat, hexagon-shaped ice crystals get split into individual colors just like in a prism. The conditions required to form a “fire rainbow” is very precise; the sun has to be at an elevation of 58° or greater, there must be high altitude cirrus clouds with plate-shaped ice crystals, and sunlight has to enter the ice crystals at a specific angle.
This is why circumhorizontal arc is such a rare phenomenon.
6. Ball Lightning
Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects which vary in diameter from pea-sized to several meters. It is usually associated with thunderstorms but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt.
Many early reports say that the ball eventually explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences, leaving behind the odor of sulfur. Many scientific hypotheses about ball lightning have been proposed over the centuries. Scientific data on natural ball lightning are scarce, owing to its infrequency and unpredictability.
7. Formation of Desert Roses
