Roughly 160 nights a year, up to nine hours of lightning, visible from up to 285 miles away, illuminate the Catatumbo River basin where it empties into Lake Maracaibo (South America's largest lake) in western Venezuela.
From Slate: "Known as the 'Beacon of Maracaibo,' the Catatumbo lightning has guided sailors for centuries. It can sometimes be seen on the horizon from as far away as the Lesser Antilles, more than 200 miles distant. In his 1597 poem 'The Dragontea,' which tells the story of Sir Francis Drake's last expedition, Spanish poet Lope de Vega tells how the lightning — 'flames, which the wings of night cover' — illuminated the silhouettes of the English privateer's ships, tipping off the garrison at Maracaibo to his surprise attack. During the last major naval skirmish of the Venezuelan war of independence in 1823, the lightning was said to have helped steer the ships of Adm. José Prudencio Padilla to victory over the Spanish fleet. The storm is so central to the region's identity that the state of Zulia put a large lightning bolt in the middle of its flag."
The lightning flashes occur 15-40 times per minute and can reach an intensity of 400,000 amps.
Discharging more the 1.2 million times a year, the Catatumbo Lightning has been called the single greatest natural source of ozone on the planet.
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