Earth is a wonderful place where many amazing events happen naturally. Today, we will look into some incredible natural phenomena that occur among us. Some of them are beautifully interesting, while the others are likely to be mysteriously disastrous. Let’s take a look at 7 natural phenomena below and see if you have seen them before.
1Columnar Basalt
There are many of them on earth, and how they are created is absolutely fascinating. Columnar Basalt results from the cooling and cracking of an unusually thick basaltic lava flow. So, basalt forms when lava reaches the Earth’s surface at a volcano or mid-ocean ridge. Actually, lava is very hot, but it cools down very quickly when it gets to the surface, usually in a couple of days. As it cools down, it forms solid rock. That is why there are a lot of them, and they all look stunning.
2Fire Rainbows
Well, rainbows are already beautiful things to see, let alone fire rainbows like these. Such rainbows occur at a very rare confluence of the right time and the right place for the sun and certain clouds. That is when crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves. And we call it fire rainbows, and they’re dope.
3Lenticular Clouds
I thought such clouds only existed in animation movies, but it is really real as well. Clouds like this are called Lenticular Clouds, and they are super cool to look at. They are masses of clouds with strong internal uplifts that can drive a motorless flyer to high elevations! This type of cloud also kinda looks like a mysterious flying object as well. But actually, they are formed when wind speeds up while moving around a large land object like mountains.
4Light Pillars
We all have seen movies that show how UFO absorbs people into their spaceships. Imagine seeing these light pillars as you walk, that might cause a mini heart attack. However, these are called light pillars, and they are visible when light reflects right off of ice crystals. The reflection can be either from the sun or from artificial ground sources such as street or park lights. They look astonishingly beautiful, to be honest. What do you think?
5Mammatus Clouds
While these things are creepy-looking clouds with such an ominous appearance. Generally, this type of cloud is composed primarily of ice. They can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction. The clouds are kind of rare to see as well, and you will find them only during severe thunderstorms.
6Orange Moons
We might have all seen this breathtaking phenomenon before despite the fact that it is rare. When this event happens, the moons tend to be larger and more orange. That is because the rays of light bounce off it as it appears lower on the horizon. So, the colors that you see will be yellow, orange, and red. I have seen it before, and it was absolutely gorgeous.
7Sinkholes
This is one of the world’s scariest natural phenomena, because who would expect that? You can’t go to sleep at night and feel okay when walking out of the house in the morning and seeing a large hole like that. Sinkholes occur when the water erodes the soil under the earth’s surface. Well, sometimes the water erodes till the land on the surface gives away and collapses into the earth. Some of them occur naturally while others result from human invention. Something like broken pipes underground and stuffs. Some of these sinkholes can go as deep as hundreds of feet.
8Sundogs
Just like light pillars, sundogs also occur when light passes through crystals. They are formed by plate crystals high in the cirrus clouds that occur worldwide. As the crystals sink through the air, they become vertically aligned which refract the sunlight horizontally that forms sundogs. If you wonder why they are called Sundogs, here is why. Greek called this phenomenon Parhelion which means behind the sun. And the speculation follows the sun like a dog follows its master, and that is how they got the name. Sundogs are also known as Mock Suns or Phantom Suns as well.
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