Fascinating Natural Phenomenon – The curious world we live in! -

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Meenakshi

I am a happy-go-lucky person, who loves reading, writing and travelling. Gardening and good food are the other things that I am passionate about. My motto in life is simple, “Love what you Do and Do what you Love”.

Latest posts by Meenakshi (see all)

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The world around us is full of awe-inspiring and seemingly magical phenomenon. From stones sailing on dried mud to flowers blooming in the middle of a desert, there are many such fascinating occurrences that baffle our mind and compel us to take notice. Here are a few of such phenomenon from different parts of the world:

Flowering desert – Every few years, the barren desert of Atacama in Chile is bathed in the most beautiful colors of pink, purple and white amongst others when flowers bloom here. It happens due to a climatic process when unusually high rainfall leads to the water reaching the seeds and bulbs otherwise latent or dormant. This takes place between September and November.

Pororoca – Literally meaning ‘Great Roar’, Pororoca is a tidal bore that travels as far as 500 miles inland upstream on the Amazon River. It occurs when the tides of the Atlantic Ocean meet these roaring waves at the mouth of the Amazon River. These waves, that get as high as 4meters, are getting increasingly popular with surfers. The best time to witness this phenomenon is February and March.

Lenticular Clouds – UFOs or clouds? These lens shaped clouds are often sighted in the troposphere, vertically aligned to the wind direction and are often mistaken to be flying saucers from the neighboring planets! These are formed as moist air flows above mountains and is obstructed by any objects such as buildings, trees, hills and an eddy is formed. These eddies result in these large and layered clouds.

Sailing Stones – In a remote area of California’s Death Valley National Park, these heavy stones appear to move across the dried lake bed known as Racetrack Playa, leaving a trail behind them in the cracked mud. The rocks’ apparent movement has been blamed on everything from space aliens & magnetic fields to pranksters. Although, the real explanation for the phenomenon is that the stones are pushed by wind-driven ice that forms & then breaks up under certain conditions.

Fog Bows – Similar to a rainbow, fog bow appears as a bow in fog rather than rain. However, unlike rainbows, where the raindrops are large enough to refract sunlight into its individual colors, the water droplets in a fog bow are much smaller; hence the refractions aren’t as precise. Thus, the way the light scatters from a fog bow, you get a lot of color overlapping  and more of a hazy white bow instead of the colorful rainbow.

Frost Flowers – These amazing ice crystal flowers are formed over thin ice as a result of the meeting of warm and cold air. This happens when the atmosphere is far colder than the underlying ice and it comes in connection with warmer and wet air. These flowers commonly grow on young sea ice or thin lake ice in very cold and calm conditions.