Venezuela’s nightly lightning show
Anyone who cowers under the duvet during a thunderstorm should look away now, but those who love the theatre and excitement of a good bout of thunder and lightning should consider visiting one spot in South America, if they ever pass that way.
South America’s largest body of water, Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, is the site of “the most frequent lightning in the world”, according to Graeme Anderson, an expert on the subject at the Met Office. The heat and humidity are at optimum levels here, and with the addition of wind caused by the surrounding Andes, the lightning is the most intense and predictable in the world.
Spectacular storms are a crowd-pleaser, and apparently something people are prepared to pay to see. Lakeside fishing communities now welcome tourists who come on special trips from Mérida, a lively Andean town in the north-west of the country.
At the head of an inlet speedboats waited to whisk us out on to the lake. The jungle around us teemed with life and we could hear the shrieks of howler monkeys, the world’s loudest terrestrial animal, before we emerged, under massive skies, on the lake, an expanse of over 5,000 square miles. Storm clouds were brewing in the distance. The soft rolling of their thunder reached us as we powered onwards to Ologa, the lakeside fishing community where we were to stay.
Night falls quickly this close to the equator, and soon we were absorbed in star-gazing. Meanwhile, the lightning show was tuning up in the far distance, ready to burst on to the stage in the small hours.
The low-growling thunder grew louder, setting the scene for the opening act of a major storm far off across the lake, electrifying the horizon. The palm-dwelling monkeys retreated into denser bush as the atmosphere began to sway their treetop dwellings, and we carried our chairs to where we might better witness the action. Suddenly, the first enormous bolt leapt to earth, followed by a roar of thunder that reverberated through the foliage.
Backlit by sheet lightning, gigantic storm clouds swelled high into the tropical night air, obscuring the star-strewn skies to the east. Then forks of lightning exploded in all directions, the larger ones burning their impressions on to our retinas so that, closing my eyes following a strike, I could review the bolt’s jagged form as it had powered through the atmosphere back to earth.
The flat-bottomed clouds sent their bright-white roots down into the ground, and more localised storms began to contribute to the show. Eventually, the lightning strikes became uncountable; the world had become an enormous strobe light. It was as bright as daylight.
We no longer needed coffee to keep us attentive, even in the small hours. Eventually dawn crept across the expanse of water before us, and the storms slowed. Exhausted by nature’s astonishing show, we crawled back to our hammocks and dropped off almost immediately, coaxed to sleep by the echoes of nature’s thunderous lullaby. And the fishermen, starting work early to avoid the intense midday heat, began their speedboat commutes out on to the water, silhouetted against the brightening eastern skies.