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These giant pouches that hang underneath a larger cloud make for an unbelievable sight. Unlike other clouds that are formed in rising air, these are formed in sinking air.

Supercells

A supercell is essentially a massive thunder storm that holds an updraft that is persistently rotating. They’re rare, but incredibly violent and can produce hail larger than baseballs.

Volcanic Lightning

This weather phenomenon produces both terrifying and beautiful imagery. Volcanic lightning occurs when a lightning storm forms in the volcanic plume.

Laplands

A Lapland is the result of incredibly heavy snows and sub-freezing temperatures. They occur when trees get covered in so many thick layers of ice and snow that they begin to slouch, looking like giant statues.

Hole punch cloud

These massive holes that can be found cirrocumulous or altocumulous clouds and literally look like a giant fist punched its way through the sky.

Fire Rainbows

Though they don’t have anything to do with either rainbows or fires, this weather phenomenon does indeed give off the illusion that parts of a cloud may be ignited. It occurs only when the sun is at least 58 degrees above the horizon, and when there are cirrus clouds in the sky.

Lenticular clouds

These are giant lens-shaped clouds that sometimes have multiple layers. They form at high altitudes and are often mistaken for UFOs.

Aurora Borealis

Otherwise known as the ‘Northern lights,’ Aurora Borealis presents stunning shows of light that dance through the sky. They are the result of electrically charged particles colliding with gas atoms in the upper atmosphere.

Columnar Basalt

These towers of hardened lava almost look like giant sand castles that you can physically climb on. They are a result of lava cracking as it cools in a perpendicular direction to the initial flow.

Penitentes

These shards of icy snow can tower up to 5 meters in the air, and are a result of hot sun rays sublimating large fields of snow in high altitudes.

Fire Whirls

Essentially a tornado of fire, fire whirls are rare and occur when the perfect air temperature and current mixes with the flames, causing a swirling vortex of fire.

Frost Flowers

When the temperature outside of a particular plant is below freezing while the inside of the plant is not, ice pushes its way out into the cold air, forming delicate and beautiful ‘flowers of ice.’

Bioluminescence

Bioluminescence is a beautiful glow that happens when tiny organisms experience a chemical reaction.

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Why you?

First let’s start with what might make you a match made in heaven for these pests. Mosquitos are attracted to warmth and can be influenced by the expulsion of carbon dioxide. So, the bigger you are, the more relative heat you give off and the more CO2 you exhale, making you a human bug magnet.

Hair Color

Blonde hair? You may have more fun, but that fun is likely to include more mosquitos. Science has yet to decipher why, but mosquitos seem to prefer blondes.

Perfume

Are you one of those people who can’t leave home without taking a perfume bath? If your fragrance of choice includes floral scents, get ready for the onslaught. These types of aromas are especially attractive to mosquitos.

Clothing

Your emo cousin Stan doesn’t hate the outdoors because the sun is too bright, it’s because his black wardrobe makes him a prime target for the swarm. Dark colors hold heat greater than lighter colors, making them more attractive for a potential lunch date.

So, you’re a blonde giant who adores black gothic robes, what can you do to combat your unfortunate circumstances? What substances really repel these f*ckers?

What DOESN’T work

Bug Zappers

You’d need a bug zapper the size of the moon and a way to carry it around with you for this to really be successful. Moving on.

Vitamin B

This has become a popular myth, but there is absolutely no science to it. By all means keep getting your vitamins, but don’t expect them to help you stay bump free.

Citronella

These sprays and candles are all the rage. The truth is, they’re only effective for 3-10 minutes after application. This is just long enough for you to pound a few drinks and start getting your buzz on. This is why you wake up the next day covered in bites with no idea why. Just blame the booze like you always do.

What substances actually work?

Three substances have been proven to be consistently effective at repelling mosquitos while remaining safe for humans:

Catnip

It’s not just for cats anymore. Proven to be 10x as effective as DEET.

Beautyberry

Known as a folk remedy in the south, but this is no tall tale. The stuff actually works marvelously.

Peppermint Oil

Not only is this scent appealing to humans, it repels mosquitos AND their larvae. Finding inventive ways to put peppermint oil around your deck and outdoor areas could save you a lot of hassle as things warm up.

There you have it: Shave your head. Wear your best Sunday whites. Go on a diet. Bathe in peppermint oil. Presto, you’re mosquito free!

Source

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12. Yellowstone National Park

11. White Sands Monument National Park

10. Grand Canyon National Park

9. Acadia National Park

8. Zion National Park

7. Denali National Park and Reserve

6. Bryce Canyon National Park

5. Great Smoky Mountains National Park

4. Grand Teton National Park

3. Arches National Park

2. Glacier National Park

1. Rocky Mountains National Park

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In the 1880s, the tree was hollowed out by a private land owner, so that tourists could pass through it. The tree was chosen in part because it bore a large forest fire scar.

Like Yosemite’s Wawona Tree, which it emulated, tunneling severely damaged it. For many years, automobiles drove through it as part of the “Big Trees Trail”.

Over the years, the tree became a popular tourist attraction among California’s “Big Trees” wilderness.

On January 8th, strong winter storms toppled the tree, shattering on impact.

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Huge flocks of up to 50,000 starlings form The Black Sun form in areas of the UK right before sundown in mid-winter. They’re also called murmurations.

Running through the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, the Enchanted River is a beautiful natural mystery. Why? Because no one really knows where it comes from.

Tanzania’s Lake Natron is a salt lake fed by mineral-rich hot springs that is the only regular breeding area in East Africa for the 2.5 million flamingos who live there.

Tidal bores on the Amazon in Brazil and the Severn in England are a phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travels up a river against the flow.

Lenticular clouds are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form in the troposphere, and because of their shape have been offered as an explanation for UFO sightings.

Frost flowers are ice crystals commonly found growing on young sea ice and thin lake ice in reaaaally cold and calm conditions, like -7 degrees Fahrenheit.

A little over 30 miles in diameter, the Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of Africa, is a circular geological formation located in the middle of the Sahara Desert. No one really knows how the shape came to be, but there are several theories that range from an asteroid impact to natural erosion.

The Catatumbo Lightning occurs 140-160 nights a year, 10 hours per night and up to 280 times an hour.

Underwater crop circles in the oceans off the coast of Japan may look like they came from aliens, but they’re actually created by a male pufferfish when he tries to woo a female.

Undulatus asperatus, aka “roughened or agitated waves” has been proposed as a separate cloud classification by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. It would be the first new type of cloud recognized since 1951.

The Flowering Desert occurs in the Atacama Desert, Chile when rainfall is unusually high. Normally the region gets less than 12 mm of rain each year.

Circumhorizontal arcs (also called fired rainbows) occur when an ice halo is formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds.

In Death Valley, USA, Sailing stones are a geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

There are several naturally occurring flames around the world, most of which are kept lit by natural gases. However, that’s not the case for Eternal Flames Falls in Chestnut Ridge Park, New York. The rocks surrounding the flame don’t produce any gas, so scientists are unsure how it continues to burn. The fire is said to have been lit by Native Americans THOUSANDS of years ago.

Namibia’s mysterious Fairy Circles are one of nature’s greatest mysteries, and local legend says they are the footsteps of the gods.

40,000 interlocking basalt columns in Northern Ireland make up the Giant’s Causeway, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption.

The Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize is almost 1,000 feet across and over 400 feet deep.

Spherical boulders in New Zealand are exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them by coastal erosion.

Each year an estimated 43 million land crabs migrate to lay their eggs in the ocean. Authorities close most of the island’s roads during this time, which takes at least a week.

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Russian photographers Laila Pregizer and Uwe Schmida, along with body art specialists Leonie Gené and Joerg Duesterwald, team up for an interesting new project involving nude women, nature, and lots of paint. The ‘Metamorphosis Project’ was created to highlight the parallels between humans and nature by literally fusing the female body to the surrounding environment. Hide and seek anyone?

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The Palingenia longicauda, (also known as the long-tailed mayfly or the Tisza mayfly to locals) have a strange life cycle allowing them to live underground in the larvae state for 3 years of their lives. The only time they surface is as an adult, mating and plaguing the surrounding Hungary towns with a dense cloud of insect orgies.

After fully maturing, the male Tisza mayflies emerge from the mud below the river ready to mate. They only have about 3 hours to do so before they die.

Due to synchronized hatching, the mayflies all emerge at once, in one big cloud of bodies and pheromones.

The insects are so desperate to get it on that one female may have up to 20 males going after her at one time.

The air gets so thick with the insects that it almost looks like snow. Indeed, when the mating is over, snow plows have to come to clear the streets.

The Tisza River is now the only place in the world where you can see long-tailed mayflies, though they once used to flourish throughout Europe.

These pictures may make it look like something Moses conjured to punish the Egyptians, but most Europeans who witness the blooming of the Tisza River say the event is actually quite beautiful. In fact, efforts have been made to reestablish mayfly eggs to certain European rivers to blossom the return of new Tisza mayfly colonies. I wish them good luck on that effort, and to not start any similar effort in the States!

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Chiang Dao, Thailand.

Istanbul, Turkey.

Flumserberg, Switzerland.

Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Woodburn, United States.

Savannah, USA.

France.

Glacier, USA.

South Tyrol, Italy.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, United States.

Natural Park Ergaki, Russia.

Rainier, USA.

Ashikaga Flower Park, Japan.

Grundarfjörður, Iceland.

Mainau, Germany.

Rocky Mountain, United States.

Scotney Castle, England.

Callaway Gardens, United States.

Cantabria, Spain.

Lodz, Poland.

Texas, USA.

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For some people in Chile, a normal evening turned disastrous in the matter of minutes.

Imagine waking up to this terrifying display in the middle of the night…how would you react?

The Villarrica volcano in Chile erupted in the wee hours of March 3rd, spewing ash and lava some 3,300 feet into the air. More than 3,000 people evacuated from the nearby towns of Pucon and Conaripe. The volcano is located about 400 miles south of Santiago, the capital of Chile.

The evacuations, according to the mayor of Pucon, were carried out calmly with no emergencies. After about 20 minutes, the volcanic activity subsided, and no ash or flowing lava was reported near any areas of human habitation.

Villarrica, also known as Rucapillan in the native Mapuche language, is about 9,000 feet high. The summit is a popular hiking spot, especially for those who want to catch a glimpse of the lava lake at its peak. It’s also an active volcano, and its last major eruption was in the mid-1980s.

There’s no news yet of when the residents and tourists can return to the area, but for now, it seems Villarrica is quiet. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced that she will travel to the area to reassure citizens.

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Simone Crestani is a glass maker! He started blowing glass when he was 15 years old and immediately became very fond of it. He can say that he has two big passions so far in his life – glass and nature. Therefore, in his works he tries to combine both of them – he gives his sculptures natural shapes.

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Nature Reclaims Pripyat, an abandoned city near Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

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Every now and then, Mother Nature messes things up a bit. We’re used to seeing her magnificence on display, creating things of wonder and excitement. But like anyone, she doesn’t always get things perfect.

That doesn’t mean her mistakes aren’t beautiful in their own way, because they are. But her oddities can be still be pretty strange…

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