11 Mysterious Natural Phenomena You’ll Only See If You’re Lucky

You’re in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, one of the driest places on Earth. But this desert has a beautiful secret. Every 3–5 years... flowers pop up out of nowhere. It’s so famous, it’s also called the “flowering desert”.

Seeds lie around in the ground, just waiting for some rain. When the desert gets enough water, about 200 types of flowers sprout up. The yellow sands of the Atacama turn purple, white, green, and even pink! Another mystical phenomenon that can be seen in the desert is called a sand waterfall.

When the wind brings a lot of sand to the edge of the canyon, it begins to fall down. Now amplify this effect 100 times, and you get a sand waterfall in Saudi Arabia. It really is like Niagara Falls. Only there’s not a drop of water. The locals say this phenomenon warns of an impending sandstorm.

Fairy rings, also known as elf rings or pixie rings, are mysterious circles of mushrooms that appear in grasslands and forested areas. There’s a lot of debate about why these fairy rings form a nearly perfect circle. Some superstitions claim that fairy dances would burn the ground, causing mushrooms to rapidly grow.

In southern India, between July and September 2001, people witnessed one of the strangest weather phenomena in recorded history! The rain was red! What many would’ve thought to be a typical rainstorm left them shocked. The color was bright enough to stain clothes! There were other colors too, such as green, yellow, brown, and even black!

In the middle of a monsoon, red rain started to fall and did so periodically for several weeks. Researchers have found this unusual rain is stained either by dust or algae, so don’t try to catch any on your tongue! Scientists aren’t entirely sure how the algae get all the way up there! This does make events like this a little unsettling!

People who live in rural central Norway over the Hessdalen valley can often witness floating lights of white, yellow, and red across the sky. The lights appear both at day and night, and once back in the 80s they were spotted 15–20 times in a single week. The Hessdalen Lights can last just a few seconds, but sometimes they can last more than an hour.

The lights move, seeming to float or even sway around. Some scientists believe that the reason for these lights is due to ionized iron dust, others say it’s combustion that includes sodium, oxygen, and hydrogen. Many people claim they’re just misidentified aircraft. Nor-way!

Snow Donuts are one of the rarest meteorological sights to see, with perfect weather conditions needed just to create them! Found in any snow-covered mountain area — like the Rocky Mountains — the wind, temperature, snow, ice, and moisture have to all work together for us to see these phenomenal rings!

A thin layer of wet snow on the ground. Under that layer, ice or powdered snow. Then, a strong enough breeze to roll the donut down a hill, just like a snowball! Once it stops rolling, it can be the size of a baseball or as large as a car tire! It all depends on how strong the wind is.

A newly formed snow donut won’t stay around for very long, so hurry up with that camera! And watch your head!

Can you believe that there’s a place on Earth with its own ecosystem and atmosphere, similar to another planet? Well, start believing! Movile Cave, located in Southeastern Romania, remained closed in complete darkness for a whopping 5.5 million years! It wasn’t until workers discovered the cave when they were looking for a place to build that anyone learned about it. Scientists carved out an opening to the cave and found that a completely sustained ecosystem was thriving inside!

As a pathway was carved through the rock past numerous tunnels, scientists found a lake of sulfuric water that stank like rotten eggs. The air was filled with hydrogen sulfide and had 100 times more carbon dioxide than Earth’s atmosphere contains. Needless to say, this air is completely toxic.

What’s even crazier is that a whole ecosystem has been existing in this cave, with 33 species that can’t be found anywhere else on Earth! This cave gives us a glimpse of what could possibly exist on other planets with completely different atmospheres. How it managed to exist on Earth all this time without anyone knowing is rather unbelievable, isn’t it?

Check these trees out. They’re called Indian rubber trees. Their strong roots grow not underground but on the surface. With the help of special frames and fasteners, people have learned to control how these roots grow.

Let’s say a tree is next to a small pit. You need to make a bridge from one end of this pit to the other. You direct the growing tree roots in the needed direction. Over time, the roots penetrate the ground and strengthen under endless downpours. It takes about 15 years to create one bridge.

Here’s another amazing tree called “The Tree of Life.” It grows in Bahrain’s desert. The tree has been standing on top of this sandy hill for more than 400 years, surrounded by miles of sand. It’s extremely hot here, and there’s no moisture. But despite this, the tree has green leaves, and it continues to grow.

So far, scientists haven’t figured out yet how the tree gets moisture and nutrients. There are only places with oil deposits around. Locals think the tree is sacred. After all, it demonstrates the magic of life and the power of nature. Some experts are sure that it’s all about the roots. They go so deep that they can reach underground sources of water.

So there you are. You’ve been driving for hours through the night. You didn’t have any chance to sleep, so your mind is hanging by a thread. You stop the car and go out to stretch your limbs. And then you look up into the sky and see a beautiful sunrise. Whoa, wait! There’re three Suns in the sky! You rub your eyes, but nope. There’re still three bright stars in the sky.

No, our home star hasn’t been torn into three pieces. Nor has it been visited by two other stars. This is called a sun dog. It occurs mostly during severe frosts. Small ice crystals in the sky bend the light. As a result, you may see three bright spots in the sky instead of just one. This phenomenon is officially called a halo. Usually, it’s just a circle around the sun. You can even see a halo at night too.

Just look at a streetlamp, and you’ll see a bright circle around it. Sometimes, a halo can take on a fancier shape. If there’s a lot of ice in the air, the light is warped even more. Just like in a room with a dozen mirrors. Then, the halo can take on the shape of a human eye. Because of this phenomenon, a false dawn can occur too.

While you’re looking at the horizon, the dawn begins, and the edge of the sun appears. A little bit more, and... Wait, the Sun starts to just dissolve in the sky. After a few moments, it’s dark again. And only a minute later, the real Sun shows its face. It was the same light curvature effect you saw before with the three Suns. Only now, the light is curved vertically, not horizontally. And instead of the real Sun, its reflection in ice crystals in the sky appeared.

But the sunrise with three stars on the horizon is actually real. Not on Earth, though, but 340 light years away. There’s a star system at the center of which lurks a star almost twice the size of the Sun. And there’re two small stars orbiting around this giant.

This strange world has a planet too. Sunsets and dawns there really happen with three stars. If you brought your significant other to a park bench to watch a sunset here, your date would go just fine. Whatever that means.

And since we’re talking about the most baffling natural phenomena, it would be a crime not to mention snow in a desert! Yep, in the winter of 2018, the inhabitants of the Sahara Desert, one of the driest and hottest places on this planet, woke up to discover a thick blanket of snow covering the sand. In some places, the layer of snow, enveloping the dunes, reached a staggering 15 inches!

Meteorologists, however, had an explanation for this exciting phenomenon. They stated that cold pools of air, combined with the precipitation from the most recent storm, resulted in a snowfall instead of rain. So what do you do in that case, build snow camels? One hump or two?