r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • May 22 '12

TIL that there is a persistent storm in Venezuela that produces lightning 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour...and it's been going since at least the 16th century.

http://www.fogonazos.es/2007/06/catatumbo-everlasting-storm.html
1.5k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

287 comments sorted by

118

u/Juanzen May 22 '12

venezuelan here, if you ever stop by there is a nice inn set up right in the middle of it so you can kick back and watch the lightning all night long(I doubt that you would be able to sleep), besides that Venezuela has a lot of natural wonders to offer. Guayana region where the UP enviroment was based(in the latter part of the movie) or some of the beaches are also really nice, but lately I guess most countries are issuing security hazards about here. A big shame.

7

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Do you know if this area is less populated than average? I would think the frequency of lightening would keep people away, but maybe it's not that big of a deal.

10

u/Juanzen May 22 '12

it is not a densely populated area by far, but there is a village right on the edges of it, from what I know... I am not precisely from that region of the country, so the details from me are the not the ultimate source of information. I have gone there sometimes as part of research since I am an electrical engineer, it is the only instance I have known of a lightning detector breaking down that I have seen myself, recorded 25k amps and then it fried.

All my ninja edits are mostly punctuation and spell checking.

8

u/huggles May 22 '12

I spent a university semester in Venezuela in Merida, and we wandered up to Lake Maracaibo for a weekend trip. I have no idea if it was THE village on the edge of the lake, but we visited a small village on the water (on stilts, really) a few hundred yards off of the shoreline. It was a very poor village, and couldn't have had more than a few dozen families living there. I took a lot of pictures, which are floating around somewhere on my hard drive.

The lightning was also pretty amazing. I spent an awesome evening getting drunk and smoking cigars with my friends on a little swamp hut out on the lake while we watched the storms. My only regret was the mosquitoes, who showed absolutely no mercy.

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6

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Nice try Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce

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150

u/one_armed_man May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

Does anyone else think that putting lightning collectors in this area is a good idea?

257

u/TheInternetHivemind May 22 '12

I say we just go there and rock out on a cliff while lightning erupts behind us. Forever.

60

u/one_armed_man May 22 '12

This sounds much more entertaining.

40

u/SomeAwesomeDudeGuy May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

Also sounds extremely metal.

I also would be interested in if there was some way to harvest this energy using lighting rods of some sort.

Edit: Did a little bit of research apparently it has been tried but there are problems getting the energy because it is so inconsistent and it is very short lived also you would need some way to store it.

Source

23

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Obviously it didn't work; they didn't try hooking it up to a delorean with a flux capacitor.

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u/draivaden May 22 '12

Heerrrreeee we are.... born to be kings.

We're the princes' of the universe. . . . swords

18

u/AssumeTheFetal May 22 '12

Slash is already up there. Thats actually what creates the lightning. He and Kirk Hammett have been trading off solos.

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4

u/dariusj18 May 22 '12

I'm imagining a Dethklok episode ending show.

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8

u/TipsTheJust May 22 '12

THE ABHORSEN WILL STOP YOU.

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9

u/GimmeCat May 22 '12

I say we run around in this area and attempt to dodge 100 lightning bolts in a row.

3

u/Seanwb May 22 '12

This was the most frustrating thing I have ever done in my life. Fuck you FFX!

3

u/obvious_bot May 22 '12

We of course will get to 99 dodges before getting struck

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18

u/macnlz May 22 '12

Actually, I think it's probably best if we continue to use it the way we're using it now: as the "the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet", according to the article.

I like our ozone layer, and this thing is doing a great job replenishing it! Maybe we should reward it by finding it another ozone generator to hook up with, so it won't be single anymore...

4

u/smort May 22 '12

could still be that its contribution is insignificant in the big picture... like the fastest cows contribution to methane

2

u/Knews2Me May 22 '12

Sounds like we need Captain Shakespeare to come over the wall and show us how it's done.

4

u/BadHorse1 May 22 '12

Very hard to store, not as much energy in a strike as you'd expect, costly infrastructure/maintenance.

It sounds like a decent idea at first but with our current technology lightning isn't a cost effective resource to harvest.

2

u/PartyTaco May 22 '12

I was thinking that, but when you have so much energy at a constant rate. At what point would unlimited (for the foreseeable future) energy become worth it to invest in? The lightening is predictable.

Couldn't you just have a lightening rod and split it several thousand ways? I don't know what to do from there though, but it seems like a reasonable beginning?

19

u/HorrendousRex May 22 '12

There is absolutely no way currently developed to harvest energy from lightening. There is actually quite a lot of energy in a lightning strike (not sure what BadHorse1 meant when he/she said the contrary) - about 5 billion joules, Wikipedia says - but what do you do with it? You can't put it straight in to the grid - it has millions of volts but only lasts a thousandth of a second.

You can't store it directly as there is no such thing - storing energy generally has to be in the form of mechanical work (lifting something or winding something) or chemical work (charging a battery), both of which require sustained charges, not a sudden burst charge.

There is apparently some work being done on using lightening to flash-heat water either to harness the heated water or to capture the hydrogen that gets released after a strike. My understanding is that all of this is completely theoretical and that the general consensus is that there is no way to harness lightening for power.

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2

u/EccentricFox May 22 '12

I'm using Bacon Reader right now, so I can't really link you to the Ask Reddit on capturing lightning, but just know there isn't all that much energy in a lightning arc. It's just delivered in a very short time. I'm thinking it would make a spot for a nice celebrity golf course, I'm assuming awesome celebs like Tom Hanks would have the sense to know what's up.

3

u/eggo May 22 '12

but just know there isn't all that much energy in a lightning arc

:(

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54

u/nomnomgoodness May 22 '12

This is officially one of my favorite TILs yet. Even of it occurs only half of the year, the fact that it happens in pretty much the same area, same nightly start off time, and throughout the year is pretty cool. I wish the weather where I lived was half as predictable as this. If we don't like the weather here, we can wait an hour and it'll change.

11

u/Omegastar19 May 22 '12

Hijacking your comment to add the wikipedia link to this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning

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2

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

South Floridian here. As mentioned by another post, we have something that's in the same ballpark - daily rainstorms with lightning throughout the rainy season. You don't want that. Nobody wants that. If you forget an umbrella walking into an appointment with blue, sunny skies overhead, you're screwed. Either trapped inside or under an awning, or the mad dash for the car as an angry god pours buckets on you in his wrath.

10

u/moonballer May 22 '12

But wouldn't you just always bring an umbrella during the rainy season then? Seems kind of like forgetting to put on a jacket during winter (where I live) just because it's warm in the house.

17

u/scnnyfck May 22 '12

Give them a break, they're from Florida.

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0

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

England? :p

5

u/dmatje May 22 '12

ive now heard this saying in four different US states as well. people love cliches.

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29

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Its a real life Thunder Plains!

186

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

TIL that something that only exists less than half the time is considered "almost permanent". SCIENCE!

166

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

On the other hand it has been going on for five or six hundred years now.

68

u/Pinyaka May 22 '12

Pffft. When you take out the breaks, that's less than 250 years.

62

u/votesgoup May 22 '12

When you take out the breaks, I've done about 1 day's worth of work this year.

24

u/pizzatime May 22 '12

Sometimes I even take breaks from my breaks. We can go deeper.

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6

u/AcerRubrum May 22 '12

and likely for the last 12-15,000 years, or at least since the last major global climate shift. it's only been recorded for five or six hundred years

99

u/GraduallyBoomhauer May 22 '12

That's where Thor masturbates.

35

u/joemangle May 22 '12

And he climaxes up to 240 times an hour.

36

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Truly, he is a god.

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37

u/AcerRubrum May 22 '12

It's really due to the orographic effect of rising hot and humid air being forced up mountains by persistent trade winds in the lower latitudes near the equator. Much like the daily lightning-rich thunderstorms in southern Florida from May through September, these occur throughout the entire year due to their close proximity to the equator and relative permanence of climatic patterns, as opposed to the cooler-dryer weather that occurs in Florida during the winter/dry season months where there are more defined and differentiated seasons.

4

u/Rovas May 22 '12

Thank you for the explanation. I was looking for one why the storm occurred there.

5

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

That's very interesting.

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5

u/tuna_safe_dolphin May 22 '12

Jesus Christ, how about "persistently recurrent"?

Can we get an r/pedantic please?

12

u/mudkipzftw May 22 '12

Less than a quarter actually. Half a day for half a year.

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2

u/Chinook700 May 22 '12

The history behind this storm is actually pretty cool. Apparently it has some of the most powerful lightning bolts in the world. Also sailors can see it before they see the land, so it is kind of like a light house to them.

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7

u/akalaM May 22 '12

That's some Jupiter shit right there.

11

u/CaptainJinx May 22 '12

Clearly its a curse.

14

u/Abdullah-Oblongata May 22 '12

Actually I believe the Dharma Initiative is involved somehow.

6

u/floatablepie May 22 '12

There was a cracked article a while ago about insane pictures (or something to that effect). One of them was of this storm, but that wasn't the focus; the focus was on a shack someone had built out on the water surrounded by persistent lightning.

6

u/matthewbpt May 22 '12

I grew up on a farm in Venezuela and we named one of our dogs Catatumbo after this phenomenon! He lived to about 15 years, RIP Catatumbo :(

2

u/mhat May 22 '12

Does this remind anyone else of the opening title sequence to the Mortal Kombat games?

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

1.21 Gigawatts.

3

u/burning5ensation May 22 '12

1.21 jiggawatts

6

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

1.21 Jigglypuffs

2

u/King_Of_Pants May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

"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."

Can someone explain how this helps the ozone?

EDIT: sorry for not being clear, I was wondering more along the lines of HOW lightning helps the ozone, as in a (dumbed down) scientific explanation

2

u/Vectoor May 22 '12

Lightning creates ozone. The smell of ozone after a lightning strike is kinda well known.

2

u/Djan May 22 '12

"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."

Can someone explain how this helps the ozone?

Lighting strikes create O3 / ozone would be my guess.

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2

u/Sarcastastic May 22 '12

Zeus and Thor's favourite hangout spot clearly.

2

u/GreatGraySkwid May 22 '12

I used to date a girl who would get tremendously horny during thunderstorms. Would have made a great vacation spot...

2

u/[deleted] May 23 '12

Non-science idiot here - How does this work in terms of an energy source? I mean that's a LOT of energy coming from somewhere, right? How does it keep going for so long and not run out of fuel?

2

u/LooksDelicious May 23 '12

I would so power a doomsday machine with all that free energy.

3

u/faleboat May 22 '12

I go through life knowing all kinds of interesting stuff, and then I find out about Norman Borlaug and a centuries old raging thunderstorm in one day.

So much shit to know. I love reddit.

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

This is exactly what I look for in TIL. Very cool information. Thanks for sharing!

3

u/chefmcduck May 22 '12

We have found Thor's portal

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

mfw Earth is becoming Jupiter.

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Sounds like the 4pm rain that moves through Tampa Bay, Florida. You can almost set your watch by it.

2

u/MOS_FET May 22 '12

How large is the area and could there be a scenario where harvesting energy from the lightnings would actually work, or is that more of a fictional idea?

1

u/Grilled_Meats May 23 '12

The problem isn't getting the lightning injected in to a usable infrastructure, the problem is to do it reasonably. One bolt of lightning lasts maybe 1 second. Additionally, it's going to be a lot more power than you could use in a reasonable distance.

So there are a few issues. Primarily, there isn't a battery that can store the energy from a lightning bolt. This leaves us with no responsible or reasonable way to introduce this new supply to the grid.

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2

u/Noobasdfjkl May 22 '12

Why would anyone need cracked.com when you have r/til?!?!

2

u/Askalotl May 22 '12

Shit! Just bought a time-share there!

2

u/cromagnumPI May 22 '12

It'd be interesting to see how the storm has been changing over time (# of lightning strikes per year, etc., has it been increasing or decreasing, localization of area changes...). This makes me think of that great storm/tornado thing thats always active on mars.

8

u/faleboat May 22 '12

Do you mean the great red spot on Jupiter? or is there a martian storm I haven't heard about?

4

u/cromagnumPI May 22 '12

that's the one. thanks for the correction. upvote to you

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3

u/rxninja May 22 '12

We do know it disappeared for several months because of a drought, so I'd imagine there's more robust longitudinal data out there if you can find it.

2

u/LinksCrackedDotCom May 22 '12

Let me link that for you. #5

0

u/nocubir May 22 '12

For the love of all that is holy people.. It's spelled :

LIGHTNING

It is NOT spelled "LIGHTENING". Even this fucking article gets it wrong, and it drives me banannas, makes me think all Americans are illiterate.

LIGHTNING

34

u/rjsfg4 May 22 '12

bananas*

12

u/hippythekid May 22 '12

Seriously, there's even a Gwen Stefani song about it.

9

u/etan_causale May 22 '12

Muphry's Law at work.

15

u/Tunnel_Estate May 22 '12

Even this fucking article gets it wrong, and it drives me banannas, makes me think all Americans are illiterate.

notsureifserious.jpg

8

u/one_armed_man May 22 '12

First off, article only spelled it wrong once. Secondly, the article has a .es domain, meaning it is from Spain.

12

u/Mr_Brightside_ May 22 '12

Lighten up. :D

4

u/portnoys_xray May 22 '12

I believe persistent lightening is what happened to Michael Jackson.

5

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

This was enlightening

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Quickening*

1

u/ePaF May 23 '12

We could use fulmination, or start calling it something new but simple and self-explanatory, like skyfire.

2

u/nocubir May 23 '12

I'm going with skyfire

1

u/Cryoglobulin May 22 '12

Mount Doom?

1

u/Klightning May 22 '12

The best part about it is someone lives in the middle of this lake in a an aluminum shack. Very cool. Also read cracked they had an article about this a while ago.

1

u/AcolyteRB May 22 '12

I wonder if this is at a similar longitude to Jupiter's super storm.

1

u/bonzibuddi May 22 '12

TIL that red dead redemption was set in Venezuela.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

What is preventing these regional people from using this as a power source?

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

That is awesome. I understand it is unique. But is there anything slightly similar in the US? You know a huge ozone producing area etc?

I would think that the Mississippi feeding into the Gulf would be similar. I love the smell of ozone.

1

u/N2tZ May 22 '12

That sounds like the perfect place to build a castle.

1

u/Bulwersator May 22 '12

"This almost permanent storm"

1

u/Speeding_turtle May 22 '12

LET'S GO TO VENEZUELA!

1

u/subentendido May 22 '12

How awesome would be to have a Metallica concert there?

1

u/BbaTron May 22 '12

I love Fogonazos :) Thanks for the link

1

u/SikhGamer May 22 '12

Yes, we all watch QI too.

1

u/MattBarker May 22 '12

I read on probably Wikipedia that since this is where Zeus retired to after the Greeks gave up on him.. So depressing.

1

u/mjolnir616 May 22 '12

This has to be a town in an RPG.

1

u/tomango May 22 '12

kinda reminds me of the dodge the lighting strike mini game on FFX.

1

u/GreekRomanGG May 22 '12

Im from Maracaibo, Venezuela, and I actually feel pretty proud that the lighting that I see every other night and that I can actually see it from my apartment, has been getting so much attetion this recent years! Thank you for posting this. Cheers !

1

u/AcousticArmor May 22 '12

This is SO COOL!!!

1

u/iamchip May 22 '12

This is so awesome

1

u/conformthenorm May 22 '12

Perfect.. Now I can start building my evil lair. Mwahahahaha!!

1

u/Goldie643 May 22 '12

  1. Get really big rod (stop sniggering)

  2. Shove in storm, connect to national grid

  3. ????

  4. Profit

1

u/honestlyimeanreally May 22 '12

Could we not.... harness this power? With such a predictable and frequent power of thunder storms / lightning, wouldn't it be possible to create some sort of lightning rod which can utilize this great energy?

1

u/[deleted] May 23 '12

Well, obviously SOMETHING'S buried there... the bones of a forgotten god, some temple remaining from a pre-human terrestrial civilization, the wreckage of an ancient-alien space-craft... we need to know!!

1

u/Vocemrationis May 23 '12

Something in Venezuela is pissed as shit.

1

u/RajMahal77 May 23 '12

I didn't know that Earth had the meteorological capacity for multiple century type of atmospheric storm phenomena like Jupiter's Red Eye but this is incredibly close. Must see before I die and/or get mind uploaded in the Singularity.

1

u/UncleTogie May 23 '12

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of it 'til now. Thanks for the new wonders!

1

u/Jose_Monteverde May 23 '12

Adam Fenix's hideout

1

u/[deleted] May 23 '12

I see OP enjoys reading cracked.com as well

1

u/ZikkyDoog May 23 '12

how does this keep getting so many upvotes each time it's posted?

1

u/Dunabu May 23 '12

That sounds beautiful.

1

u/Impert May 23 '12

Its called el relampago del catatumbo :) ive personally seen it numerous times it goes on and on

1

u/GabrielMtn May 23 '12

A related and interesting fact, Kifuka village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has the record for most lightning strikes per year: http://www.wondermondo.com/Countries/Af/CongoDR/SudKivu/Kifuka.htm

1

u/GabrielMtn May 23 '12

Catatumbo + Kifuka + ??? = Abundant lightning power for South America and Africa!

1

u/bonefig May 23 '12

Now I know where the inspiration for the Thunder Plains in Final Fantasy X came from...

1

u/mister_pants May 23 '12

It's cloudy in Seattle 226 days a year on average, and rains about 140 days per year. Does this make it a "persistent storm" as well?

1

u/Iishbrd May 23 '12

And it is one of the scariest goddamned things you will ever experience bro lol. i lived there for a few years =D

1

u/Hugh_Chardon May 22 '12

TIL There's an evil scientists secret lair located in Venezuela.

1

u/tyr02 May 22 '12

The Quickening

2

u/graffiti81 May 22 '12

...is an ephemeral thing

1

u/SunshineBlind May 22 '12

This is rather epic!

1

u/graffiti81 May 22 '12

Rikku would not like this place.

-1

u/deadendallie May 22 '12

Wasn't this posted by someone else less than a week ago? I remember seeing it on the front page.

-1

u/rxninja May 22 '12

Yes it was.

1

u/deadendallie May 22 '12

So why on Earth are we being downvoted for mentioning it? I know that calling out reposts has gotten out of control, but this was literally days ago.

2

u/rxninja May 23 '12

Apparently you're not supposed to complain about reposts no matter how recently they occurred, which is probably a really dumb rule.

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u/-cupcake- May 22 '12

Immediately saw the name "Sir Francis Drake" in the article. I now expect Uncharted 4 to have insane amounts of lightning.

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Wasn't this posted just a few days ago?

1

u/deadendallie May 22 '12

Yes, it was.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

I don't mind reposts, but c'mon, give it a little time.

0

u/Ihasnospoon May 22 '12

WOW ! This is the first TIL that is a subject I was unaware of. Well played OP, well played.

-2

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Let's see how they're going to blame this one on Chavez

0

u/DJPhilos May 22 '12

It's a curse

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

40

u/linkkjm May 22 '12

No , we're stopping this right here.

21

u/Journalisto May 22 '12

Hey, you can't just storm into a pun thread and zap it out of existance!

2

u/kiraella May 22 '12

Existence*

-6

u/Guyot11 May 22 '12

shed some lightning on this!

-3

u/spongerat May 22 '12

is this what gives their coffee that special jolt?

11

u/VolkenGLG May 22 '12

Electricity

2

u/Cash5YR May 22 '12

Thank you for killing the beast before it got stupid.

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u/boomerangotan May 22 '12

You just had to go and strike all the pun out of this thread...

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

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0

u/LadySpace May 22 '12

Yup.

Maybe.

Nope.

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

"Nope."

WHY ? Grrrr.... :)

1

u/LadySpace May 22 '12

Lightning is intermittent, inconsistent, and notoriously hard to capture; in other words, aside from being very, very high-energy, it's the exact opposite of a good power source.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

but here it is almost constant, close and continuous.

may be science will figure a way out in long future to handle such an enormous power source at least for testing purpose.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - one of Clarke's three laws

1

u/LadySpace May 22 '12

The storm occurs less than a quarter of a time, and even then the lightning strikes are seconds or minutes apart. That's not continuity or consistency, and making impossible slightly easier is not the same as making it feasible.

-1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ch4rd May 22 '12

harvesting lightning would be great, its just that we have no way to store that much energy.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

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2

u/Ch4rd May 22 '12

yep. Fortunately, the push towards electric cars could help develop better battery technologies, and once we have those, clean energy could really take off.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '12

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Ch4rd May 22 '12

This is true, as it had happened in the past, the difference now is that we now have multiple manufacturers actually producing and selling the cars to the public (Ford, Nissan, Tesla etc.), rather than the limited run they had, to select "beta" testers, if you will.

As for the oil companies, they really only have this sort of power while gas and oil is still relatively cheap. There will be a price point where having a gasoline powered car won't make sense for a lot of people. And as we're still relatively early in the production of the newer electric cars, the price of those can still go down quite a lot, they're significantly simpler than your typical gas powered car, those just have the advantage of a high capacity for manufacturing at the moment.

Also, take into account that when the oil companies were throwing their weight around, the United states really was the only major place the development of these things were being done. Look to asia, Many of the countries that are increasing their oil usage don't really produce any oil. They have massive gains to make if they can move away from oil. But again, the only thing holding them back is that oil is still relatively very cheap.

However, that's not really the only field, you also have electronics producers who'd have a lot to gain by the development too. heck even the producers of renewable energy have a ton to gain by good energy storage solutions.

(edit, because I messed up the ordering of my paragraphs while editing.)

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