Strange Wonders Of The World

Phenomenal Wonders Of The Natural World
WebEcoist and Environmental Oddities
Penitentes

Named after peak-hooded New Mexican monks (lower right above),
penitentes are dazzling naturally-forming ice blades
that stick up at sharp angles toward the sun.
Rarely found except at high altitudes,
they can grow up taller than a human and form in vast fields.
As ice melts in particular patterns,
'valleys' formed by initial melts leave 'mountains' in their wake.
Strangely, these formations ultimately slow the melting process
as the peaks cast shadows on the deeper surfaces below
and allow for winds to blow over the peaks, cooling them.
Lenticular Clouds

Ever wonder the truth about UFOs?
Avoided by traditional pilots but loved by sailplane aviators,
lenticular clouds are masses of cloud
with strong internal uplift that can drive a motorless flyer to high elevations.
Their shape is quite often mistaken
for a mysterious flying object or the artificial cover for one.
Generally, lenticular clouds are formed
as wind speeds up while moving around a large land object such as a mountain.
Light Pillars

Light pillars appear as eerily upright luminous columns in the sky,
beacons cast into the air above without an apparent source..
These are visible when light reflects just right off of ice crystals
from either the sun (as in the two top images above)
or from artificial ground sources such as street or park lights.
Despite their appearance as near-solid columns of light,
the effect is entirely created by our own relative viewpoint.
Sundogs

Like light pillars, sundogs are the product of light passing through crystals.
The particular shape and orientation of the crystals
can have a drastic visual impact for the viewer,
producing a longer tail and changing the range of colors one sees.
The relative height of the sun in the sky
shifts the distance the sundogs appear to be on either side of the sun.
Varying climactic conditions on other planets in our solar system
produce halos with up to four sundogs from those planets' perspectives.
Sundogs have been speculated about and discussed since ancient times
and written records describing the various attributes of our sun
date back the Egyptians and Greeks.
Fire Whirls

Fire whirls (also known as fire devils or tornadoes)
appear in or around raging fires
when the right combination of climactic conditions is present.
Fire whirls can be spawned by other natural events
such as earthquakes and thunderstorms,
and can be incredibly dangerous,
in some cases spinning well out of the zone of a fire itself
to cause devastation and death in a radius not even reached by heat or flame.
Fire whirls have been known to be nearly a mile high,
have wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour
and to last for 20 or more minutes.
Orange Moons

This last phenomena is something most people have seen before
- beautiful orange moon hanging low in the sky.
But what causes this phenomena
- and, for that matter, does the moon have a color at all?
When the moon appears lower on the horizon,
rays of light bouncing off it
have to pass through a great deal more of our atmosphere
which slowly strips away everything but yellows, oranges and reds.
The bottommost image above is true to the hues of the moon
but has enhanced colors to more clearly show the differences in shade
that illustrate the mixed topography and minerology
that tell the story of the moon's surface.
Looking at the colors in combination with the craters
one can start to trace the history of impacts
and consequent material movements across the face of our mysterious moon.

From: Hanif Awan