CATATUMBO

Published in DEIA, Oct. 7, 2010



Midnight, surfing the Net trying to find something. I’m searching but I really don’t have a clear idea of what I want and then all of a sudden, a small but a shocking discovery that I am going to talk about, without even visiting it . The place is in the National Park "Ciénagas de Juan Manuel", northwest of Venezuela, in the flowing river of Catatumbo and the lake Maraciabo. There takes place what today is named "El Relámpago Catatumbo" (Catatumbo Lightning). A lightning that strikes in the same place between 140 and 160 nights a year. Every time that the phenomenon happens it shines brightly between 7 and 10 continuous hours, with a frequency of 50 discharges per minute, around 1,176,000 lightning’s per year, generating 10 % of the ozone layer of the planet. So it is that in only 10 minutes he could generate enough energy to turn on all the bulbs of South America. Scientists allege two reasons for this to happen always in the same place: On one hand the stagnation of thousands of thunderclouds that collide with the mountain ranges that surround the enclave and an the other hand the high concentration of methane gas . Every time I can I observe the electric storms that visit us. The different type of wind that announces the storm. The lightning a true symbol of the ancestral and what's uncontrollable. The spectacular main star of nature that still has been impossible for us to subdue and that interprets his character under the same script, time after time, since the world began. And finally the thunder, deafening companion that reminds us what we are and what we will never be able to be. In Venezuela they have the belief that the Catatumbo Lightning has place because thousands of glowworms concentrate together at that point to honor the fathers of the Creation. I do not know what explanation, unscientific, we could give to the capricious distribution of our lightning’s, but as soon as I can I will enjoy their forms, lights and explosions again. A whole spectacle within the reach of everyone.

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