Saturday Storm: Video of a tornado so beautifully perfect it seems unreal

from Live Storm media
thanks, Boing Boing

weather forecast: Thunderstorms likely everyday for the next week

How do Trees Survive Winter?

Humans can go inside or put on clothes, but trees spend winter naked in the cold. Why don't they all die?

Storm turns lighthouses into a chilling masterpiece

from Cottage Life

Hollywood set designers make a career out of creating enchanted towers and mythic-looking castles for big-budget fantasy films. But if you visit one of the Great Lakes in the winter, you can often see those special effects in real life without spending a dime.

That’s exactly what photographers Thomas Zakowski and Tom Gill found when the lighthouses at the St. Joseph North Pier on the coast of Lake Michigan froze over. And thankfully, they pulled out their cameras to document nature’s frigid masterpiece.

The pair of century-old lighthouses, which stand 10.5 and 17.4 metres tall, are connected by a catwalk that leads to some impressive ice sculptures when battered by winter waves. Known for their spectacular icicles, the lighthouses have become an unlikely winter destination for tourists. And based on the breathtaking images below, we can see why.

Source: Thomas Zakowski via 500px.com and Tom Gill via lapstrake.blogspot.ca

The Chemistry Of Snowflakes

from the presurfer

The video tracks formation of snowflakes from their origins in bits of dust in clouds that become droplets of water falling to Earth. When the droplets cool, six crystal faces form because water molecules bond in hexagonal networks when they freeze.

As snowflakes continue to develop, the branches can spread, grow long and pointy, or branch off into new arms. As each snowflake rises and falls through warmer and cooler air, it thus develops its own distinctive shape.

Lightning Rainbow

A rainbow during storms in Haikou, the capital of China's Hainan province. Photo: China Daily/Reuters (click on the image to see it larger)

Thanks, BoingBoing

Catatumbo, The Everlasting Storm

from Fogonazos

The mysterious “Relámpago del Catatumbo” (Catatumbo lightning) is a unique natural phenomenon in the world. Located on the mouth of the Catatumbo river at Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an hour.

This almost permanent storm occurs over the marshlands where the Catatumbo River feeds into Lake Maracaibo and it is considered the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet, judging from the intensity of the cloud-to-cloud discharge and great frequency. The area sees an estimated 1,176,000 electrical discharges per year, with an intensity of up to 400,000 amperes, and visible up to 400 km away. This is the reason why the storm is also known as the Maracaibo Beacon as light has been used for navigation by ships for ages.

In 1595 sir Francis Drake tried to attack the city of Maracaibo but the local defence caught sight of his ships thanks to the light from the storm. It is also said that Catatumbo lightening gave Almirante Padilla victory over the Spanish float during the independence war, on july 24 1823.

The collision with the winds coming from the Andes Mountains causes the storms and associated lightning, a result of electrical discharges through ionised gases, specifically the methane created by the decomposition of organic matter in the marshes. Being lighter than air, the gas rises up to the clouds, feeding the storms.

Some local environmentalists hope to put the area under the protection of UNESCO, as it is an exceptional phenomenon, the greatest source of its type for regenerating the planet's ozone layer.

More info and sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5