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Short Stuff: Catatumbo Lightning · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and here's Jerry, and Dave's not here, but that's okay
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: because this is short stuff and that's just how we
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: do it. And Chuck, I'm excited about this one because
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I had no idea about this, had never heard of it,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and you totally scored with this one. So yeah, it
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: wasn't too long ago. It was when the last six
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: months or so I became aware of the Catatumbo lightning.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I think I was just looking through like weather phenomenon
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: because that's always interesting. Um want to shout out Explorers
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: web dot com, uh, Science, ABC dot com, NASA dot gov,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: along with some other websites because there's plenty of websites
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: talking about the cat Zumbo lightning. Yeah, I want to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: shout out Atlas Obscura, who I saw a pretty neat
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: little two minute video to learn some extra stuff too.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So catet Tumbo lightning is this very specific, very isolated
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: phenomenon that takes place in one specific spot in Venezuela
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: on a very giant lake lake. I'm gonna say, Marisaibo, Maricibo, Okay,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: what do you think I was gonna say Maracaibo, but
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a hard seer or so
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: let's go with Maracaibo. Mine was way too fancy. One
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: specific part of this lake even it's that like localized, yeah,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and so you'd think, like, okay, big what, there's some
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: lightning that happens this one specific part of this lake.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And you would be right if it weren't for the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: fact that these lightning storms take place at roughly the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: same time every day, about three hundred days out of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the year. That's right, And you're saying, okay, who cares, still,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: big whoop, you've got some lightning. It is lightning such that, uh,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you are getting a possible lightning strike maybe every two
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: seconds during this time frame, such that it almost provides
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: a near constant night sky light. It's that constant. Here's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the other thing too about it that just makes this
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: one of the most amazing weather phenomenon around. It takes
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: place over like nine hours, so every night, almost three
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: nights a year, this lightning strikes about twenty eight times
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: per minute over this one localized area for nine hours.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. That's remarkable. And like you said, I mean,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it lights up enough stuff that you can see everything.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And there was actually a very famous raid from that.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Francis Drake was carrying out or about to carry out,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: on the city of Maracaibo on the shore of Lake
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Maracaibo appropriately, and he was found out because that lightning storm.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: He was seen before he could attack, and they managed
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to repel the attack. That's amazing. It's also known as
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the Beacon of Maracaibo because it had served as a
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: beacon for sailors over over time. It's one of the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: oldest lakes on Earth, dating back to thirty six millillion years,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and it was a big shipping route. If you were
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: going to the port of Kabimus and Maracaibo, you would
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: go through there and navigators would count on this lightning
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: as a beacon. It's sort of like having a lighthouse
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: around at all times in a way, except a lot
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: more dangerous because this stuff. I mean, if you're thinking, like,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: do people get struck by lightning more there and killed more,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the answer for sure as yes. Yeah. NASA calls it
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the lightning hot spot of the World, which apparently in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Republic of Congo there that used to be
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the lightning hot spot. But I'm not sure how you
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: ever would have thought to have beaten the Catatumbo lightning.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But yeah, now it's now, it's official Catatumbo lightning. It's
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it's it. If you're talking about um. The indigenous people,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the warr w a r I, they believed that it
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: might have been the work of uh fireflies paying tribute
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: to their creator God, which that was wrong, wrong, wrong,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: it was wrong. But it's always it's always fun to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: hear those uh what the early folks thought about things. Sure,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: but instead we now know exactly what's going on thanks
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to some friends at noah UM. And I think we
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: should take a break and we'll come back and explain
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: how this works. What do you think, let's do it? Okay, Okay.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: So the reason why this phenomena is so isolated and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: also so reliable. It starts about after dusk and again
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: it lasts for about nine hours is because of the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: geography of Lake Maracaibo and where it is. Apparently it's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: right about at the mouth of um the Caribbean. The
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Caribbean is very nearby, so there's a big, steady supply
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of warm water that keeps the lake warm. Okay. Yeah,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And as we talked about in our wind episode, wind
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: is created when warm air rises and cooler air flows
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in to kind of fill its spot and even things out.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: But one of the other consequences of warm air rising,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: especially warm air in the tropics that's impregnated with um
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: humid Caribbean air or yeah, human Caribbean air. As it
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: floats up, it starts to come in contact with colder
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: air that often contains colder ice particles. And when that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: warm water vapor and those cold ice particles collide, they
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: actually generate static electricity. And it's on a minuscule, minuscule
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: level for each of these collisions, but if there's enough
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: of them, and in this area there's plenty, uh, all
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: of that stuff can create lightning, and it can create
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: it in aces. And then the case of Lake Maracaibo,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: what's going on as you have these uh it's sort
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of surrounded on three sides by these mountain ridges. So
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: what that leaves is as a really narrow little pathway
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: uh to the Gulf of Venezuela, where that Caribbean sea
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: water is just constantly bringing in warm water through that
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: little channel. And then you've got also you know, you've
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: got you're in the tropics there, so you've got the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: sun that's also pulling moisture from the lake, and then
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you've got these winds. And I think they found uh,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: there's this researcher, Uh what's anhel Munio's right, and Unheld
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: did a bunch of research on this, basically trying to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: predict a model, like coming up with a model to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: predict conditions that might lead to occurrence of lightning and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: not not just here but period and then applying it
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: here to see like what the deal was. Yeah, because
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: they used to suggest that it was um uranium deposits
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: or maybe methane deposits beneath the lake that we're somehow
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: electrostatically charging the air above it. But I guess they've
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: never found uranium or methane deposits to support that, and
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: it's not even clear whether that could happen. So on
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: helm Unions said, I think I've got this figured out.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: He managed to trace and track um the wind that's
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: generated every night, and it's so reliable it has its
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: own name. He calls it the Maracabo Basin nocturnal low
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: level jet. Needs to work on that name a little bit, sure,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: it should at least be an acronym yeah, I was
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: gonna say it's not even the n B N L
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: l J. So because of the geography and the topography,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that wind comes in every night and it's funneled through
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that little narrow mouth that you were talking about. But
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: as it pushes along inward land word um, it eventually
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: runs into those mountains that ring the lake itself, right
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: And when that happens, it goes up and it's pushing
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: all of that warm air right up into that colder air.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And this wind, this jet picks up about the same
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: time every day around dusk. So there's your wind right there,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and then you've got the hot water or the hot
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: warm air that's full of water being pushed up into
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the colder air. Yeah, and it's it's kind of interesting.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So you have this air that sort of has a
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: title motion going as well, So this air is flowing
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: in and then receding again. And just the fact that
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: it's it's happening at about the same time every day
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: because of the way that everything just happened does be
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: laid out and sit in just the right way to
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: make this happen at the same time every day. Uh, well,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: not every day, but what is it two three hundred
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: days a year, three hundred days a year, and there
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: was a period in two thousand ten where it went
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: six weeks without it and that was a huge deal
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't usually do that, and they figured out
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: there's because of El Nino bringing very dry wind in. Yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and to be clear, these are storms. It's not like
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: you just sit back and watch the light show and
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: it's just like this warm summer heat lightning or something like.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's a company by really strong surface winds, and
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know what it's like to live there.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I think about what about a quarter of the population
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of Venezuela lives sort of nearby. Yeah, so it's it's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. Yeah, I mean that's just every
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: single day. I guess they just count on these big,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: big storms coming in. Yeah. So they've got the lightning show,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the Catatumbo lightning three hundred nights a year, and it's
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: stormy about a hundred and sixty nights a year. There's
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a ton So what's happening when it's not stormy but
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you're getting the lightning? They're probably Oh so I saw
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: on the Atlas Obscure video that sometimes it's it can
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: be like hundreds a hundred kilometers in the sky, so
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: you can get that light show, but it's literally quiet.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty cool too. Yeah, those are the money
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: nights to be there, I guess for sure. Yeah. And
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I saw one other thing that I not only saw
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: this here, I didn't realize it, but I had some
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: bottom mine haff stuff going on, because there's this website
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: called Futility Closet that is just an amazing website. So
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I saw that. I saw this fact in this article,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and then last night I was on Futility Closet and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I saw the same fact. So it has to that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: means it's worth sharing, don't you think. Let's hear it. Venezuela.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Supposedly it was named by Amerigo Vespucci, who named it
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Venezuela because when he got to the Lake Maracaibo region,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: he saw people living in huts on stilts and it
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: reminded him of people living in in houses on stilts
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in Venice. So Venice apparently means little or Venezuela apparently
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: means little venice. That's amazing. I thought so too. I
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: think it's so cool. What else you got? I've got
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: nothing else? Well, I'm glad we explained it. I love
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: ones that are like this is amazing and here's exactly
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: how it works. So thank you very much. On helm
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: UNO's thanks that was obscure, NASA Science, ABC Explorer, Web
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and Futility Closet. I love it. Short Stuff is out everybody,
• 11:05
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• 11:09
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