Qinghai, 2012: The Ball Lightning That Got Caught on a Spectrograph
In 2012 Chinese scientists recorded the spectrum of a ball of lightning rising from a ground strike: soil, not plasma magic.
Tag: Natural Phenomena
17 case files, newest first.
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Kerala Red Rain, 2001: Blood-Colored Rain and Alien Cells
For two months in 2001 parts of Kerala, India, got rain colored red.
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Ice From a Clear Sky: Airliner 'Blue Ice' and Spain's Ice-Block Scare of January 2000
The FAA has a record of ice falling from airliners onto houses and cars, from leaking lavatory systems.
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The Catatumbo Lightning: Why One Venezuelan Lake Lights Up Almost Every Night
Over one corner of Lake Maracaibo, storms flash nearly every night of the year. Satellites now rank it Earth's top lightning spot. Here is why it happens.
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The Bloop, 1997: The Ocean Sound That Was Ice
NOAA hydrophones caught a huge low sound in 1997. NOAA later matched it to cracking icebergs.
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Lake Nyos, 21 August 1986: The Night a Lake Exhaled
In 1986 a Cameroon crater lake released a cloud of carbon dioxide that killed about 1,746 people in their sleep.
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The Hessdalen Lights: A Norwegian Valley With Its Own Light Show
Since at least the 1930s, and in a burst in the early 1980s, people in the Hessdalen valley of central Norway have seen lights that hover, drift and flare.
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Kashasha, 1962: The Laughter That Closed Schools
In January 1962 girls at a mission boarding school in what is now Tanzania began laughing uncontrollably.
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The Ararat Anomaly: Noah's Ark in a Spy Photo?
US intelligence images of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey show a dark shape in the ice near the summit that some say is Noah's Ark.
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Namibia's Fairy Circles: Termites, Thirsty Grass, or Something Else?
Millions of bare, evenly spaced rings dot the grass of the Namib Desert. Two research camps, termites versus thirsty grass, still can't agree what makes them.
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Blood Falls: The Antarctic Glacier That Bleeds
A glacier in Antarctica's Dry Valleys leaks a blood-red stain. Explorers blamed algae in 1911; the real cause is buried salt water, iron and microbes.
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Seneca Guns: The Booms Over the Finger Lakes, and the 'Legend' Cooper Made Up
For two centuries people around New York's Seneca Lake, and later the Carolina coast, have heard deep booms like distant cannon.
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The Missouri Booms, 1805: The 'Artillery of the Rocky Mountains' Lewis and Clark Could Not Explain
At the Great Falls of the Missouri in 1805, Lewis and Clark kept hearing booms like distant cannon under clear skies. They never found the cause.
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Widecombe, 1638: The "Great Fiery Ball" in the Church
On Sunday afternoon, October 21, 1638, a violent thunderstorm struck the parish church at Widecombe-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor during the service.
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The Nuremberg Sky Battle, 1561: Spheres, Crosses and Tubes Around the Rising Sun
At sunrise on 14 April 1561, a Nuremberg broadsheet says, red, blue and black balls fought around the sun for an hour. We read the original print.
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Strasbourg, 1518: The Summer People Danced Until They Dropped
In July 1518 a woman began dancing in a Strasbourg street and did not stop.
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The Moeraki Boulders (Kaihinaki), Otago: Giant Stone Spheres on a Beach
Huge round boulders sit on Koekohe Beach in Otago, New Zealand. We read what the encyclopedia, DOC and geologists say they are.
