Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: and here's Jerry, and Dave's not here, but that's okay
Speaker 1: because this is short stuff and that's just how we
Speaker 1: do it. And Chuck, I'm excited about this one because
Speaker 1: I had no idea about this, had never heard of it,
Speaker 1: and you totally scored with this one. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't too long ago. It was when the last six
Speaker 1: months or so I became aware of the Catatumbo lightning.
Speaker 1: I think I was just looking through like weather phenomenon
Speaker 1: because that's always interesting. Um want to shout out Explorers
Speaker 1: web dot com, uh, Science, ABC dot com, NASA dot gov,
Speaker 1: along with some other websites because there's plenty of websites
Speaker 1: talking about the cat Zumbo lightning. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: shout out Atlas Obscura, who I saw a pretty neat
Speaker 1: little two minute video to learn some extra stuff too.
Speaker 1: So catet Tumbo lightning is this very specific, very isolated
Speaker 1: phenomenon that takes place in one specific spot in Venezuela
Speaker 1: on a very giant lake lake. I'm gonna say, Marisaibo, Maricibo, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you think I was gonna say Maracaibo, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a hard seer or so
Speaker 1: let's go with Maracaibo. Mine was way too fancy. One
Speaker 1: specific part of this lake even it's that like localized, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you'd think, like, okay, big what, there's some
Speaker 1: lightning that happens this one specific part of this lake.
Speaker 1: And you would be right if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: fact that these lightning storms take place at roughly the
Speaker 1: same time every day, about three hundred days out of
Speaker 1: the year. That's right, And you're saying, okay, who cares, still,
Speaker 1: big whoop, you've got some lightning. It is lightning such that, uh,
Speaker 1: you are getting a possible lightning strike maybe every two
Speaker 1: seconds during this time frame, such that it almost provides
Speaker 1: a near constant night sky light. It's that constant. Here's
Speaker 1: the other thing too about it that just makes this
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing weather phenomenon around. It takes
Speaker 1: place over like nine hours, so every night, almost three
Speaker 1: nights a year, this lightning strikes about twenty eight times
Speaker 1: per minute over this one localized area for nine hours.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. That's remarkable. And like you said, I mean,
Speaker 1: it lights up enough stuff that you can see everything.
Speaker 1: And there was actually a very famous raid from that.
Speaker 1: Francis Drake was carrying out or about to carry out,
Speaker 1: on the city of Maracaibo on the shore of Lake
Speaker 1: Maracaibo appropriately, and he was found out because that lightning storm.
Speaker 1: He was seen before he could attack, and they managed
Speaker 1: to repel the attack. That's amazing. It's also known as
Speaker 1: the Beacon of Maracaibo because it had served as a
Speaker 1: beacon for sailors over over time. It's one of the
Speaker 1: oldest lakes on Earth, dating back to thirty six millillion years,
Speaker 1: and it was a big shipping route. If you were
Speaker 1: going to the port of Kabimus and Maracaibo, you would
Speaker 1: go through there and navigators would count on this lightning
Speaker 1: as a beacon. It's sort of like having a lighthouse
Speaker 1: around at all times in a way, except a lot
Speaker 1: more dangerous because this stuff. I mean, if you're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: do people get struck by lightning more there and killed more,
Speaker 1: the answer for sure as yes. Yeah. NASA calls it
Speaker 1: the lightning hot spot of the World, which apparently in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Republic of Congo there that used to be
Speaker 1: the lightning hot spot. But I'm not sure how you
Speaker 1: ever would have thought to have beaten the Catatumbo lightning.
Speaker 1: But yeah, now it's now, it's official Catatumbo lightning. It's
Speaker 1: it's it. If you're talking about um. The indigenous people,
Speaker 1: the warr w a r I, they believed that it
Speaker 1: might have been the work of uh fireflies paying tribute
Speaker 1: to their creator God, which that was wrong, wrong, wrong,
Speaker 1: it was wrong. But it's always it's always fun to
Speaker 1: hear those uh what the early folks thought about things. Sure,
Speaker 1: but instead we now know exactly what's going on thanks
Speaker 1: to some friends at noah UM. And I think we
Speaker 1: should take a break and we'll come back and explain
Speaker 1: how this works. What do you think, let's do it? Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: So the reason why this phenomena is so isolated and
Speaker 1: also so reliable. It starts about after dusk and again
Speaker 1: it lasts for about nine hours is because of the
Speaker 1: geography of Lake Maracaibo and where it is. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: right about at the mouth of um the Caribbean. The
Speaker 1: Caribbean is very nearby, so there's a big, steady supply
Speaker 1: of warm water that keeps the lake warm. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as we talked about in our wind episode, wind
Speaker 1: is created when warm air rises and cooler air flows
Speaker 1: in to kind of fill its spot and even things out.
Speaker 1: But one of the other consequences of warm air rising,
Speaker 1: especially warm air in the tropics that's impregnated with um
Speaker 1: humid Caribbean air or yeah, human Caribbean air. As it
Speaker 1: floats up, it starts to come in contact with colder
Speaker 1: air that often contains colder ice particles. And when that
Speaker 1: warm water vapor and those cold ice particles collide, they
Speaker 1: actually generate static electricity. And it's on a minuscule, minuscule
Speaker 1: level for each of these collisions, but if there's enough
Speaker 1: of them, and in this area there's plenty, uh, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff can create lightning, and it can create
Speaker 1: it in aces. And then the case of Lake Maracaibo,
Speaker 1: what's going on as you have these uh it's sort
Speaker 1: of surrounded on three sides by these mountain ridges. So
Speaker 1: what that leaves is as a really narrow little pathway
Speaker 1: uh to the Gulf of Venezuela, where that Caribbean sea
Speaker 1: water is just constantly bringing in warm water through that
Speaker 1: little channel. And then you've got also you know, you've
Speaker 1: got you're in the tropics there, so you've got the
Speaker 1: sun that's also pulling moisture from the lake, and then
Speaker 1: you've got these winds. And I think they found uh,
Speaker 1: there's this researcher, Uh what's anhel Munio's right, and Unheld
Speaker 1: did a bunch of research on this, basically trying to
Speaker 1: predict a model, like coming up with a model to
Speaker 1: predict conditions that might lead to occurrence of lightning and
Speaker 1: not not just here but period and then applying it
Speaker 1: here to see like what the deal was. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they used to suggest that it was um uranium deposits
Speaker 1: or maybe methane deposits beneath the lake that we're somehow
Speaker 1: electrostatically charging the air above it. But I guess they've
Speaker 1: never found uranium or methane deposits to support that, and
Speaker 1: it's not even clear whether that could happen. So on
Speaker 1: helm Unions said, I think I've got this figured out.
Speaker 1: He managed to trace and track um the wind that's
Speaker 1: generated every night, and it's so reliable it has its
Speaker 1: own name. He calls it the Maracabo Basin nocturnal low
Speaker 1: level jet. Needs to work on that name a little bit, sure,
Speaker 1: it should at least be an acronym yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say it's not even the n B N L
Speaker 1: l J. So because of the geography and the topography,
Speaker 1: that wind comes in every night and it's funneled through
Speaker 1: that little narrow mouth that you were talking about. But
Speaker 1: as it pushes along inward land word um, it eventually
Speaker 1: runs into those mountains that ring the lake itself, right
Speaker 1: And when that happens, it goes up and it's pushing
Speaker 1: all of that warm air right up into that colder air.
Speaker 1: And this wind, this jet picks up about the same
Speaker 1: time every day around dusk. So there's your wind right there,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the hot water or the hot
Speaker 1: warm air that's full of water being pushed up into
Speaker 1: the colder air. Yeah, and it's it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So you have this air that sort of has a
Speaker 1: title motion going as well, So this air is flowing
Speaker 1: in and then receding again. And just the fact that
Speaker 1: it's it's happening at about the same time every day
Speaker 1: because of the way that everything just happened does be
Speaker 1: laid out and sit in just the right way to
Speaker 1: make this happen at the same time every day. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: not every day, but what is it two three hundred
Speaker 1: days a year, three hundred days a year, and there
Speaker 1: was a period in two thousand ten where it went
Speaker 1: six weeks without it and that was a huge deal
Speaker 1: because it doesn't usually do that, and they figured out
Speaker 1: there's because of El Nino bringing very dry wind in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to be clear, these are storms. It's not like
Speaker 1: you just sit back and watch the light show and
Speaker 1: it's just like this warm summer heat lightning or something like.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's a company by really strong surface winds, and
Speaker 1: it's I don't know what it's like to live there.
Speaker 1: I think about what about a quarter of the population
Speaker 1: of Venezuela lives sort of nearby. Yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Yeah, I mean that's just every
Speaker 1: single day. I guess they just count on these big,
Speaker 1: big storms coming in. Yeah. So they've got the lightning show,
Speaker 1: the Catatumbo lightning three hundred nights a year, and it's
Speaker 1: stormy about a hundred and sixty nights a year. There's
Speaker 1: a ton So what's happening when it's not stormy but
Speaker 1: you're getting the lightning? They're probably Oh so I saw
Speaker 1: on the Atlas Obscure video that sometimes it's it can
Speaker 1: be like hundreds a hundred kilometers in the sky, so
Speaker 1: you can get that light show, but it's literally quiet.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty cool too. Yeah, those are the money
Speaker 1: nights to be there, I guess for sure. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I saw one other thing that I not only saw
Speaker 1: this here, I didn't realize it, but I had some
Speaker 1: bottom mine haff stuff going on, because there's this website
Speaker 1: called Futility Closet that is just an amazing website. So
Speaker 1: I saw that. I saw this fact in this article,
Speaker 1: and then last night I was on Futility Closet and
Speaker 1: I saw the same fact. So it has to that
Speaker 1: means it's worth sharing, don't you think. Let's hear it. Venezuela.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it was named by Amerigo Vespucci, who named it
Speaker 1: Venezuela because when he got to the Lake Maracaibo region,
Speaker 1: he saw people living in huts on stilts and it
Speaker 1: reminded him of people living in in houses on stilts
Speaker 1: in Venice. So Venice apparently means little or Venezuela apparently
Speaker 1: means little venice. That's amazing. I thought so too. I
Speaker 1: think it's so cool. What else you got? I've got
Speaker 1: nothing else? Well, I'm glad we explained it. I love
Speaker 1: ones that are like this is amazing and here's exactly
Speaker 1: how it works. So thank you very much. On helm
Speaker 1: UNO's thanks that was obscure, NASA Science, ABC Explorer, Web
Speaker 1: and Futility Closet. I love it. Short Stuff is out everybody,
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