Earth’s climate systems are extraordinarily complex, producing every moment of the day weather, strangest weather and climate conditions of all varieties. Predicting the weather even a few days into the future remains an imperfect science riddled with challenges only made larger by climate change.
Climate Strangest Weather
Some of these unusual weather events appear to be occurring with greater frequency as shifts in the Earth’s climate continue to accelerate. Last year - 2019 - was the second hottest recorded year on earth.
Below You Can Find 38 Examples Of The Strangest Weather Events Incl. Video:
1. Lenticular Clouds
Lenticular Clouds have a round disc shape that has actually meant they have explained some UFO sightings. The stationary clouds normally form in perpendicular alignment to the wind direction.
El Chaltén
A rare flying saucer-shaped cloud known as a lenticular appears over a rock formation in Argentina.
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2. Electrical tentacles of red jellyfish sprite lightning
If you’ve ever looked up during a thunderstorm and glimpsed a red jellyfish sitting high in the sky, you weren’t hallucinating. These tentacle-like spurts of red lightning are called sprites. According to the European Space Agency, they’re ultrafast bursts of electricity that crackle through the upper regions of the atmosphere – between 37 and 50 miles up in the sky – and move towards space.
The phenomenon is a rare sighting: It lasts just tenths of a second and can be hard to see from the ground since storm clouds generally obscure it. But Stephen Hummel, a dark-skies specialist at the McDonald Observatory, captured a spectacular image of one of these sprites on July 2 (shown above) from a ridge on
Mount Locke in Texas.
“Sprites usually appear to the eye as very brief, dim, grey structures. It would help if you looked for them to spot them, and oftentimes I am not certain I actually saw one until I check the camera footage to confirm,” Hummel told Business Insider.
In the video below: Fire Devil, Fog Tsunami, Water Spout, Morning Glory clouds, Penienties, Ice Tsunami, Lenticular clouds, sand storm, red Rainbow.
20 Strangest Weather Phenomena - That Actually Exist
3. Gustnadoes
Gustnadoes are not a type of tornado. NOAA classifies the weather phenomenon as 'thunderstorm wind events.' Unlike tornadoes, the root of a gustnado is not connected to a cloud; rather, the vortex rises from the ground.
4. Asperitas clouds
Scientists named asperities clouds after the Latin word 'aspero,' which means aggravate, enrage, and roughen and was used during the classical era to describe stormy seas. NOAA considers these clouds 'other cloud phenomenon', characterized by long rippling waves through the cloud base.
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5. Microbursts
A microburst is a small version of a downburst, a column of sinking air with high-speed winds associated with thunderstorms. Similar to a tornado, microbursts can cause significant damage to buildings and landscapes and are also a threat to aircraft. Microbursts are less than 2.5 miles in scale, and extreme ones can produce wind speeds up to 150 mph. They can be either wet, dry, or a hybrid of the two.
6. Brinicle
First discovered in the 1960s, brinicle forms below sea ice when a flow of icy saline water meets an area of ocean water, forming the equivalent of an underwater icicle.
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7. Hail glaciers
Hail glaciers are large accumulations of hail that can stay frozen for some time. In 2004, in Clayton, New Mexico, 15-foot deep ice “glaciers” formed along riverbanks following a summer hail storm. The ice remained for nearly a month. Such hail glaciers have been documented on a few other occasions in locations in the American Southwest, including Dalhart and Amarillo, Texas, and most recently in the Mexican city of Guadalajara in June of 2019.
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8. Derechos
A derecho is a rare type of severe thunderstorm event. It is a long-lived, wide wind storm with showers or thunderstorms that typically moves in a straight line. A derecho often creates striking visual formations as an ominous shelf clouds approach. By definition, Derechos must include winds of at least 58 mph along most of their length and produce a swath of wind damage at least 240 miles long.
9. Mammatus clouds
Mammatus clouds occur when a large base cloud develops a series of smaller, round protuberances on the underside. While they can occur in different clouds, they are most often seen on cumulonimbus clouds, towering cloud formations with flat bases. They occur when ice crystals fall out of the cloud and turn to water vapor, cooling the air around them, creating the sunken pockets indicative of Mammatus formations.
10. Frost Flowers
These frost flowers in the Arctic ocean form from imperfections on the ice's surface in sub-zero temperatures, normally around the -20C mark. The spikes have been found to contain microorganisms making them temporary miniature ecosystems similar to a coral reef.
11. Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds
Resembling a series of rolling ocean waves, Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds often form when two adjacent atmospheric air layers are moving at different speeds. Their presence may indicate atmospheric instability and turbulence for aircraft. They may also have been the inspiration behind Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night.
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12. St. Elmo’s fire
Most often occurring during thunderstorms at sea, St. Elmo’s Fire is a burst of plasma or ionized air that glows blue and can cause tall structures such as ship masts or church steeples to appear to be on fire. It occurs when an imbalance in electrical charge causes molecules to rip apart.
13. Thundersleet
Thunder sleet happens when a thunderstorm occurs simultaneously with a sleet storm. Like thundersnow, this phenomenon is infrequent and occurs when the friction created by strong up and downdrafts causes charged particles to collide within a cloud.
14. Fallstreak holes
These picturesque elliptical holes that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds are caused by tiny water droplets within the cloud that are colder than freezing but have yet to turn to ice. Once a triggering event such as a plane flying through the clouds causes the supercooled droplets to start freezing, they rapidly crystalize and fall, leaving a hole in the cloud layer.
15. Twin tornadoes
With about 1,200 occurrences every year, tornadoes are relatively common weather events in the United States. While it is also normal for clusters of tornadoes to form simultaneously, multiple smaller vortexes almost always combine or orbit a single parent tornado. For more than one tornado of a sizable magnitude to coexist, conditions have to be unusually balanced. This dangerous and rare phenomenon occurs on average once every 10 to 15 years.
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16. Nacreous clouds
Rare but made more common by climate change, nacreous or noctilucent clouds form ice crystals and methane at high altitudes. Nick-named “mother of pearl” clouds, they appear in temperatures of approximately negative 110 F. The ice crystals refract light, producing a glimmery, iridescent look. According to NOAA, it is likely that these weather phenomena did not exist before 1885.
17. Tubular clouds
Tubular clouds, a type of arcus cloud also known as a roll cloud, form low and horizontally in the sky. They tend to form along with the edges or in the downdrafts of thunderstorms. While relatively rare and ominous-looking, these clouds are not usually a sign of dangerous weather.
Before you go!
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