CORRECTION: This has not happened only for just 500 years as you indicate at the beginning of the video (0:08), but for thousands of years ever since the formation of the Andes mountain chain (30-50 plus million years ago). It was 500 years ago when the Spanish colonizers would see the Catatumbo lightning and they would use it as a beacon to reach land.
@allenchianggaming1339 I know she did, but she is alluding to the moment Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela was being discovered by the Spanish conquistadors over 500 years ago and they would use the Catatumbo lightning as a beacon to direct themselves to main land. Again, this was just over 500 years ago. The same story I heard from another youtuber, saying the same 500 years.
There should be tons of legends & stories about this place right ? Imagine being a prehistoric human who see this for the 1st time, might have been fear & awe
Yeah, it's really rather unconsiously colonialist to put it that way - older oral history in the region, should it be preserved, ought to point the phenomena being much older - "since time immemorial" or "as long as humans have known the place"; alternatively, refer to the geologic history instead, "for millions of years since the formation of the Andes mountains and the flooding of this bay"
Venezuelan here: I was also taught that the Relámpago del Catatumbo was main source of the regeneration of ozone in the atmosphere. Anyway, it's a pretty cool place.
While thunderstorms create ozone, it's unclear what its contribution to the ozone layer is, if there's any. In any case, the main source for stratospheric ozone is chemical reactions involving UV light and oxygen molecules.
@@alooinfinite2912 Easier said than done. People have dreamed for centuries of getting power from lightning, pretty much as soon as we understood what it was. But even today we don't the tech to so rapidly store so much energy. Skyscrapers have lightning rods that get hit all the time, but there's little they can do with it but dissipate it in the ground.
I wonder if something like this could be used to generate electricity? Like setting up artificial conditions, like a sloped barrier around a basin, and then setting up some kind of lightning rod towers? Maybe not in the sense of generating full-blown thunderstorms, but at least creating enough static electricity to act like a giant natural battery.
@@takix2007 Not really, because the moment you make water interact with lightning you face the Faraday effect and cause the electricity to be on the surface of the water, making it so very little actually interacts with it and evaporates. It's really not that simple, clever-er people than me have come and gone without taming lightning.
That sounds so cool! I'm in Utah and we hardly ever get lightning, so when it does come you just have to watch it. I wish I could move to some place that has more thunder and lightning storms
I had no idea places like this exist, that's honestly so beautiful and amazing. Quick question though, why does mixing cold and hot air generate storm clouds? And what are storm clouds compared to regular clouds?
Mixing hot and cold isn’t what is generating clouds. Clouds are big floating collections of water vapour and having hot and cold air causes an updraft. This updraft carries the water vapour from large bodies of water up to form clouds.
And this happens for all clouds. Storm clouds (I think you mean with lightning) are created through the electrical difference between the earth and the clouds. How this is created I don't know for sure, it probably has to do with a sort of friction like process, the cold air getting sucked to the hot water and quickly rising up, with having static friction between air and earth/water.
Okay, I'll try to explain it simpler, hot air rises due to the fact that hot air is less dense so they naturally rise up. Now, since the hot air rises up, the space where the hot air used to reside is now a low pressure because the hot air rised up. (sorry if im redundant) This will result in the surrounding cold air to take its place resulting in the updraft. After a while, the hot air will cool down and since there are some water vapor in the hot air, the cooling down of temperature will result to little droplets. This little droplets form clouds. : )
And electricity for lightning is (afaik) essentially the friction of air/water particles in the clouds. It's the same effect as rubbing a balloon on a carpet, just on a massive scale.
Sailors in the old days (and maybe still?) called it the Maracaibo Lighthouse, because the lightning was visible up to 250 miles away! Based on the title and thumbnail of this video, I thought, "What would happen if air wasn't such a good insulator?" 'cause just imagine what the global electric circuit would be like THEN!
Today's Fact: The first ever webcam was created at the University of Cambridge in 1993, to keep an eye on a coffee pot and let people know when it was empty.
I play a pirate game on occasion. Any time I Do and it's night (ingame), i can sail to this area and there are always storms in the area. They even start shortly after sunset!
Speaking of lightning storms, I wonder how the phenomenon of lightning will work if, instead of polar liquids like water, we replace them with nonpolar liquids like methane? I was thinking of this because of the weather on different planets and their moons.
Catatumbo lighting is one of the few things I learned about and immediately wrote off as impossible. It’s crazy to realize that no, this really does happen.
As a weather geek and hobby storm chaser I have Catatumbo Lightning on my bucket list. Unfortunately Venezuela is....a mess....so I'll just settle with videos for now.
What is that location in south India with a high flash rate density ? I don’t see such a place in literature. Where did you find the locations used in the maps ?
That's Lālam, India and with 92.94 fl/km2/yr is ranked 56th in the world. Google "500 lightning hotspot table" and you'll see the NASA webpage with it. Also, you can see this and other hotspots more visually searching for "lis_vhrfc", the The LIS 0.1 Degree Very High Resolution Gridded Lightning Full Climatology
@@DrGulgulumal well, it depends on how you define "top places". It's ranked 11th in Asia and 56th in the world. Also, some of these places can be in remote areas. Not sure about this one.
I had no idea such places actually *existed* in real life, a perpetual lightning storm land feels like something out of Breath of the Wild. And yet, here we are!
I wonder if some day a battery system could exist ti capture lightning bolts, and this lake could end up being a major power source for all of south America
Surprisingly, lighting is "too little energy" for serious human use at scale. If you google the numbers and check the totals, ALL of the lighting on earth, not just a spot, ALL lighting on earth, consumes on average a small fraction (i think I remember it is less than a thousandth) of the average energy power consumed by humans globally. Since a lot of energy is released extremely fast in a fraction of a second, lighting effects are very flashy (pun intended), but "slowly and steadily" humanity uses much more energy than lightning.
Easier said than done. People have dreamed for centuries of getting power from lightning, pretty much as soon as we understood what it was. But even today we don't the tech to so rapidly store so much energy. Skyscrapers have lightning rods that get hit all the time, but there's little they can do with it but dissipate it in the ground.
Grew up in Naples 0:39 West of the *red dot* SW Florida Gulf Coast, 3pm 🕒 Dad would say- ‘Rains Storms coming, you know this’ > Implying Drive Safe. They grow in the FL Everglades, and arrive from the East ⛈️ oddly enough :o
Since this was a little unclear, has there been a lightning storm in that lake literally every day as long as records have gone back, or have there been some exceptions?
With that kind of lightning intensity, I wonder why hasn't someone invented a way to harness them for such kind of places... Lightning powered battery complex that captures the electrical and thermal power of the storm or something...
Its a great idea in theory for sure. However, designing an electronic system to tank the absolutely STUPID amounts of electrical power, enough energy to vaporize a human instantaneously, is almost impossible. Even the most robust power substations and power plants can get totally wiped out for hours or even days due to a lightning strike.
So actually, why it's just ">500y"? It should be a milions of years now. It's simple because the first data about this storm is from that period? Could we estimate that this storm is much older?
Not sure if this is a joke, hahaha, but the almost circular shape of the lake and the surrounding topography enhances the convective instability because the breezes converge in the center of the Lake. So, yes?
Sounds like a great inspiration for a blue dragon lair.
Why would only blue dragons want to live there? Are you racist?
nuh uh, someone just forgot to do a quest in legend of Zelda.
They forgot to clear the skies in Faron and get to the Thunderhead Isles
CORRECTION: This has not happened only for just 500 years as you indicate at the beginning of the video (0:08), but for thousands of years ever since the formation of the Andes mountain chain (30-50 plus million years ago). It was 500 years ago when the Spanish colonizers would see the Catatumbo lightning and they would use it as a beacon to reach land.
She said over 500 years not 500 years
@allenchianggaming1339 I know she did, but she is alluding to the moment Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela was being discovered by the Spanish conquistadors over 500 years ago and they would use the Catatumbo lightning as a beacon to direct themselves to main land. Again, this was just over 500 years ago. The same story I heard from another youtuber, saying the same 500 years.
There should be tons of legends & stories about this place right ? Imagine being a prehistoric human who see this for the 1st time, might have been fear & awe
Yeah, it's really rather unconsiously colonialist to put it that way - older oral history in the region, should it be preserved, ought to point the phenomena being much older - "since time immemorial" or "as long as humans have known the place"; alternatively, refer to the geologic history instead, "for millions of years since the formation of the Andes mountains and the flooding of this bay"
Venezuelan here:
I was also taught that the Relámpago del Catatumbo was main source of the regeneration of ozone in the atmosphere.
Anyway, it's a pretty cool place.
we should definitely just use the lightning to power the earth lol
While thunderstorms create ozone, it's unclear what its contribution to the ozone layer is, if there's any. In any case, the main source for stratospheric ozone is chemical reactions involving UV light and oxygen molecules.
@@alooinfinite2912 Easier said than done. People have dreamed for centuries of getting power from lightning, pretty much as soon as we understood what it was. But even today we don't the tech to so rapidly store so much energy. Skyscrapers have lightning rods that get hit all the time, but there's little they can do with it but dissipate it in the ground.
@@alooinfinite2912 "If my calculations are correct ... When this baby hits 88 miles per hour... You' re gonna some serious sh*t"
I'd love to visit. What's it like there now? Our US State Department is not recommending travel to Venezuela.
I wonder if something like this could be used to generate electricity? Like setting up artificial conditions, like a sloped barrier around a basin, and then setting up some kind of lightning rod towers? Maybe not in the sense of generating full-blown thunderstorms, but at least creating enough static electricity to act like a giant natural battery.
Not really because we don't have tech that can take hold of the electricity fast enough without exploding.
@@fero_zettamaybe find some way to convert the energy directly into heat?
@@fero_zetta We don’t? Seems like an easy fix
@@takix2007 Not really, because the moment you make water interact with lightning you face the Faraday effect and cause the electricity to be on the surface of the water, making it so very little actually interacts with it and evaporates.
It's really not that simple, clever-er people than me have come and gone without taming lightning.
@@fero_zettakinda poetic how Zeus still claim his rightful right over the lightning itself, even if we can make electricity for ourselves
That sounds so cool! I'm in Utah and we hardly ever get lightning, so when it does come you just have to watch it. I wish I could move to some place that has more thunder and lightning storms
Come to the southeast. Almost every night in the summer you can see lightning from distant storms.
in indonesia im terrified when lightning storm even though a lightning storms are common
Who used a repeating command block with /summon 💀
I had no idea places like this exist, that's honestly so beautiful and amazing. Quick question though, why does mixing cold and hot air generate storm clouds? And what are storm clouds compared to regular clouds?
Mixing hot and cold isn’t what is generating clouds. Clouds are big floating collections of water vapour and having hot and cold air causes an updraft. This updraft carries the water vapour from large bodies of water up to form clouds.
Hot air, higher pressure= holds a lot of water. Cold air, lower pressure= the air can't hold the water anymore so it rains.
And this happens for all clouds.
Storm clouds (I think you mean with lightning) are created through the electrical difference between the earth and the clouds. How this is created I don't know for sure, it probably has to do with a sort of friction like process, the cold air getting sucked to the hot water and quickly rising up, with having static friction between air and earth/water.
Okay, I'll try to explain it simpler, hot air rises due to the fact that hot air is less dense so they naturally rise up. Now, since the hot air rises up, the space where the hot air used to reside is now a low pressure because the hot air rised up. (sorry if im redundant) This will result in the surrounding cold air to take its place resulting in the updraft. After a while, the hot air will cool down and since there are some water vapor in the hot air, the cooling down of temperature will result to little droplets. This little droplets form clouds. : )
And electricity for lightning is (afaik) essentially the friction of air/water particles in the clouds. It's the same effect as rubbing a balloon on a carpet, just on a massive scale.
Sailors in the old days (and maybe still?) called it the Maracaibo Lighthouse, because the lightning was visible up to 250 miles away!
Based on the title and thumbnail of this video, I thought, "What would happen if air wasn't such a good insulator?" 'cause just imagine what the global electric circuit would be like THEN!
Hmm 🤔 I thought so too
I guess you could call Lake Maracaibo...
The perfect storm!
Fun fact: Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela records 15,000 lightning strikes per year.
Today's Fact: The first ever webcam was created at the University of Cambridge in 1993, to keep an eye on a coffee pot and let people know when it was empty.
How interesting!
http 418
Lightning⚡️ is beautiful but also dangerous!
Please stop
@@slipperynickelsahh it's now make sense why it's called "tea pot" because the web server simply reply 418 when it's not coffee in the pot
I play a pirate game on occasion. Any time I Do and it's night (ingame), i can sail to this area and there are always storms in the area. They even start shortly after sunset!
Esther is amazing! The lake is basically a thunder volcano.
Oh look, it's lake Maracaibo; mentioned in the What If? chapter 'All The Lightning'.
Is it a coincidence that we're also working on youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif ?
Great video Esther, well written 👍
🙏🏾 It was a team effort, I learned a lot from the Minute Earth team.
Speaking of lightning storms, I wonder how the phenomenon of lightning will work if, instead of polar liquids like water, we replace them with nonpolar liquids like methane? I was thinking of this because of the weather on different planets and their moons.
So basically, the question is does Titan can have lightning?
The thunderstorm that ends every day.
Catatumbo lighting is one of the few things I learned about and immediately wrote off as impossible. It’s crazy to realize that no, this really does happen.
I could not live there. Love watching lighting, I’d have to sleep during the day due to my severe brontophobia or fear of thunder
I was not expecting a fear of thunder from someone who watches thunderstorms, though it makes sense! Really cool handle by the way :D
Bro, I want to see a day where lightning storms are super constant. I want to see the sky flash many times. I’d be an epic scenery
Anyone who's grown up in Florida knows that clear skies mean nothing in the face of lightning.
A bolt out of the blue.
I love Esther’s voice!
Great writing! "The most STRIKING lightning show on earth"
"The most striking lightning storm" that's clever phrasing
Informative also finally Jakarya get the recognition it deserves. Lightning here can be unpredictable
Damn so it's really Jakarta. I thought the position is very familiar
*Servants of the scourge type W starts playing*
Nice to see my hometown in a video for once
As a weather geek and hobby storm chaser I have Catatumbo Lightning on my bucket list.
Unfortunately Venezuela is....a mess....so I'll just settle with videos for now.
So THIS is where the Everstorm in the Stormlight Archives came from!
Well a new place I’d like to visit on my list lol
You have playlist with minuteearth videos?
I’d just like to visit here it’d be nice to go to
I really love this collaborative style!
Oh damn, thought this was the new Stormlight Archive
How have I never heard of this before this is awesome
Beautiful. Thank you
Welcome, Esther!
Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela is where Thor lives. 🌩 ⚡️ ⛈️ 🌩 ⚡️ ⛈️ 🌩
Venezuela could build something to capture all that free energy
Thank you.
You could say it's the perfect storm
calm before the storm
reminds me of Raijin Island from One Piece!
I was searching for this comment hahaha
@@mattagamer98 Glad I found like-minded viewers :)
That place would be a great villain/ mad scientist hideout :P
Everytime Hera catches Zeus cheating, she sends him to Venezuela, the Couch of the Gods.
You just summoned the percy jackson fans lol
What is that location in south India with a high flash rate density ? I don’t see such a place in literature. Where did you find the locations used in the maps ?
That's Lālam, India and with 92.94 fl/km2/yr is ranked 56th in the world. Google "500 lightning hotspot table" and you'll see the NASA webpage with it. Also, you can see this and other hotspots more visually searching for "lis_vhrfc", the The LIS 0.1 Degree Very High Resolution Gridded Lightning Full Climatology
@@UnPuntoCircular thank you. So it’s not one of the top places. I lived around there in Kerala for a 18 years but did not know about this place.
@@DrGulgulumal well, it depends on how you define "top places". It's ranked 11th in Asia and 56th in the world. Also, some of these places can be in remote areas. Not sure about this one.
Two Venezuela-themes videos by prominent TH-camrs in a single day? Nice
Amazing
This gives me idea about worldbuilding of wizard village
if this was a fantasy location it would be full of electric eels
Or a secret entrance into a dungeon of storm giants.
Or yellow versions of regular enemies that do electric damage.
Well what a coincidence our previous video was precisely about electric eels!
Good name for a heavy metal album
I had no idea such places actually *existed* in real life, a perpetual lightning storm land feels like something out of Breath of the Wild. And yet, here we are!
Awesome
They are so many 1.21 Gigawatts!
I’m sure lake Jackson would say “hold my beer” to that Florida lighting capital. :)
Ah yes, 79 flashes per square km per year means 79 flashes per square km per year
You from EU? (You using “km”)
@@JustTriangle yeah why
@@Mipeal from what country?
I'm shocked.
They should use charged creepers for digging
I’ve been in some places where there’s a storm around the same time every day
I wonder if some day a battery system could exist ti capture lightning bolts, and this lake could end up being a major power source for all of south America
Surprisingly, lighting is "too little energy" for serious human use at scale. If you google the numbers and check the totals, ALL of the lighting on earth, not just a spot, ALL lighting on earth, consumes on average a small fraction (i think I remember it is less than a thousandth) of the average energy power consumed by humans globally. Since a lot of energy is released extremely fast in a fraction of a second, lighting effects are very flashy (pun intended), but "slowly and steadily" humanity uses much more energy than lightning.
I think they even made video about that
Still even A thousandth ofclean energy is plenty@@agustin.santiago.gutierrez
Easier said than done. People have dreamed for centuries of getting power from lightning, pretty much as soon as we understood what it was. But even today we don't the tech to so rapidly store so much energy. Skyscrapers have lightning rods that get hit all the time, but there's little they can do with it but dissipate it in the ground.
When the storms are archived.
hm, i wonder how many tornadoes (waterspouts bc they are over water) occur there that we don’t know about
Well, if humans ever develop powerful Electrokinetic abilities, we know where they can train their powers.
fun fact: this is where zuko had practiced his lightning bending
I knew this one thanks to Discovery Kids' Doki Series.
Best cartoon ever, I really miss it.
A lake like this (lake victoria) is one of the interesting plot points in a fanfic Harry is a dragon and that's okay.
Man if we could set up some way of catching all the energy of a lightning bolt then spots like that lake would be perfect for setting up power plants
Grew up in Naples 0:39 West of the *red dot* SW Florida Gulf Coast, 3pm 🕒 Dad would say- ‘Rains Storms coming, you know this’ > Implying Drive Safe.
They grow in the FL Everglades, and arrive from the East ⛈️ oddly enough :o
*almost* every kid's worst nightmare.
Free energy!
i thought that the lightning storm would be literally on another planet
Since this was a little unclear, has there been a lightning storm in that lake literally every day as long as records have gone back, or have there been some exceptions?
I like Esther's voice, but I also think that her way of reading info doesnt suit Minute Earth.
"we are sending you back to the future!"
i soooooooo want to go there one day, i f!@#ing LOVE thunder storms but live in a place that dosnt get more than 2 maybe 3 year at most.
I'd like to see legends rules for Louigs of Vuitan!
So it does end...
Cool
a thunder quilin clan resides there.
maybe Zapdos or lightning dragon. who knows
I have a lot of anxiety now... Maybe this bear from Ted movie can help
Very interesting 😎
someone awakened there lightning-lightning fruit.
I clicked just to say that.
i wonder if the life in that lagoon has evolved in some way to take advantage of the nightly lightning
so this is Necluda from BOTW 💀💀💀
woweegie! awesome
I’m surprised it hasn’t been called “Heart of Thunder”
cool
imagine if this had any similarity to why jupiter has the big red spot
I heard that when lightning strikes sand it can make glass.
It would have to heat it in a way that it organizes all its particles
@@masiethespiral I believe it's possible. Lightning seems to get very hot. I think they're called fulgurites.
Imagine if someone used a lightning rod there to power a steam engine.
With that kind of lightning intensity, I wonder why hasn't someone invented a way to harness them for such kind of places... Lightning powered battery complex that captures the electrical and thermal power of the storm or something...
Its a great idea in theory for sure. However, designing an electronic system to tank the absolutely STUPID amounts of electrical power, enough energy to vaporize a human instantaneously, is almost impossible. Even the most robust power substations and power plants can get totally wiped out for hours or even days due to a lightning strike.
Andes mountains? Andes NUTS
dang looks like someone charged their battery too long above the earth
this is my papas ass when he eats taco bell but i miss the loud ass sounds now😢
Turkish subtitles please
No
WOW! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
So actually, why it's just ">500y"? It should be a milions of years now. It's simple because the first data about this storm is from that period? Could we estimate that this storm is much older?
⚡️ Power of 2
Could be the horseshoe shape of the Venezuelan gulf that make it more attractive to lightning bolts?
Not sure if this is a joke, hahaha, but the almost circular shape of the lake and the surrounding topography enhances the convective instability because the breezes converge in the center of the Lake. So, yes?
@@UnPuntoCircular You may be correct, as those lightning storms doesn't happen during daytime when atmospheric pressure is higher.
@@johnnychang4233 during daytime, there are onshore breezes (from lake to mountains), so this convergence effect isn't present (it's the opposite)
So if I had a DeLorean time machine that required 1.21 Gigawatts of power to activate the time circuit, this is where I need to be.
Clearly we need to build a bank there, which would charge the spheres it would hold.
wow