The Lightning of the Catatumbo, the eternal storm of Venezuela

 In the town of Ologá, on the lake of Maracaibo (Zulia state, in western Venezuela), it is almost impossible to observe the night in its dark splendor. Between April and November, lightning flashes appear and disappear steadily in the sky, a phenomenon that has become a habit for residents and a "miracle" for the eyes of visitors.
Each year an average of 297 thunderstorms occur, from which this spectacle of natural light emerges.
Catatumbo lightning is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs in the Maracaibo lake basin in Venezuela, mainly in the southern part of the lake and in the lower basin of the Catatumbo river, from which its name derives. Scientists from the Scientific Modeling Center indicate that it would be more appropriate to talk about the Catatumbo lightning bolts, because they tend to occur in multiple places every night, but from a distance they are seen as a single phenomenon.

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 This phenomenon is characterized by the appearance of a series of lightning almost continuously and virtually silent because of the great distances needed to observe the phenomenon, which occurs in clouds of great vertical development forming electric shocks between 1 and almost 4 kilometers of height, as the winds associated with the Low Level Nocturnal Jet of the Lake Maracaibo Basin penetrate the surface of the lake in the afternoon hours (when the evaporation is greater) and are forced to ascend through the mountainous system of Perijá (of 3,750 msnm) and the Mountain range of Merida, the Venezuelan branch of the Andes (of up to 5,000 msnm, approximately).  The origin of this phenomenon is in the orographic effect of these mountain ranges that enclose and brake the northeasterly winds; thus, clouds of great vertical development are produced, concentrated mainly in the Catatumbo river basin. Although it is true that electrical storms produce a high amount of ozone, and Catatumbo has the highest density of electric discharges in the world, with more than 200 / km² / year, it is very unlikely that this ozone will reach the stratosphere and regenerate the ozone layer.

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 Catatumbo: the corner of Venezuela where 1.6 million lightning strikes per year
That you did not know about the rays
That record was made by the US space agency NASA and the universities of Maryland and Alabama (both in the US) and Sao Paulo (Brazil), which on Tuesday confirmed that Lake Maracaibo is the "capital" of the lightning on Earth. Although this phenomenon is widely known in Venezuela as the "Lightning of the Catatumbo", the experts considered until the moment that the greater concentration of this phenomenon originated in the basin of the Congo River, in Africa. "Until this investigation, we believed that no area would take the throne away from Central Africa as the number one lightning bolt, it could be determined that it was Lake Maracaibo thanks to the meticulous analysis carried out," NASA scientist Richard Blakeslee told BBC News. in charge of the study that was published in the bulletin of the American Meteorological Association (AMS). According to Blakeslee, 16 years of data had to be collected to arrive at these conclusions.

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 Around the lake

The phenomenon was baptized as "Catatumbo Lightning" because it was believed that it only happened in the delta of the Catatumbo River, while it flowed into Lake Maracaibo, the largest in South America. The scientists analyzed thousands of data collected by a lightning sensor called Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) that NASA put in the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, which produced about 17 years of information on tropical rains. "It was towards the end of the mission that we finally observed the tenth of a degree of resolution that led to the new identification of hot spots of lightning," Blakeslee said.

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 "It has been hypothesized that lightning and thunderstorms can be a sensitive indicator of temperature change," he said. That is why, he adds, understanding the relationship of lightning and lightning with severe weather and atmospheric chemistry is key in the creation of public environmental policies.
For Highton, however, the recognition of Lake Maracaibo has value for the communities that inhabit it and will attract the eyes of the world to a unique phenomenon.

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es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rel%C3%A1mpago_del_Catatumbo

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2016/05/160503_relampago_catatumbo_lago_maracaibo_venezuela_nasa_ps