10 Unbelievable Natural Phenomena Caught on Camera

From a bizarre locust swarm in Russia that resembled the plagues of Egypt, and a dust devil in southern Mexico that tried to join this soccer game, to a massive blue iceberg that suddenly burst out of the sea in Patagonia, and a mysterious bleeding tree that looks more like special effects from a horror movie, here are 10 unbelievable natural phenomena caught on camera. Picture this. You're a tree removal professional, and you've just arrived at what should be a standard job. You rev up your chainsaw and start hacking away. Then, all of a sudden, the tree begins leaking blood like you hit an artery. This was the scene when some folks decided to remove an old hemlock tree in their backyard. What you're about to see might look like special effects from a horror movie, but we promise it's 100% real. It's still drinking. That's coming from up there. Looks like blood though, doesn't it? Bleeding tree. I'm showing every single student that I ever had for the rest of my life. According to our camera woman, the old tree had died long ago and was mostly hollow inside. Over the years, it filled with water, which eventually mixed with the tree's sap, giving it that thick and bloody appearance. One of the best known bleeding trees is the Dracaena cinnabari, also known as the dragon blood tree. This rare species is native to the Socotra archipelago in the Arabian Sea and is known for the blood-red sap it produces. Everyone knows that mosquitoes are dangerous. They can carry lethal diseases like malaria, dengue, and West Nile virus. Everybody also knows that tornadoes are dangerous for obvious reasons. Put them together, and you probably have the worst thing to ever occur on Earth. On February 9th of 2024, residents of Pune City, India refused to come outside due to swarms of mosquito tornadoes hovering over the city. One local man was brave, or dumb enough, to weather the storm, bringing us this horrifying footage. Before you vow never to go outside again, know that this isn't exactly what it seems. According to the Times of India, the bugs you see swarming over the city of Pune aren't mosquitoes. They're chironomous, which are closely related to the mosquito but much less dangerous. Even though they're called bloodworms, chironomous pose no threat to humans or animals. They're pesky, and you wouldn't want to walk through a swarm, but they can't bite or sting you in any way. When chironomous larvae hatch, they'll form clusters in the sky and begin flying in circular motions. These swarms likely came off the Muta River, which has seen rising water levels in recent years. More water means more bugs, and thus, more bug tornadoes. Anak Krakatau, which translates to Child of Krakatau, spawned after the 19th century eruption and collapse of Krakatau Island off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Since the 1920s, Anak Krakatau has seen frequent yet small eruptions. That changed in 2018, when several powerful blasts sent magma and lava bombs spewing from the mouth and into the surrounding waters. Since volcanologists keep constant eyes on Anak Krakatau, several cameras were armed and ready to capture the eruption in all its glory. If you thought those eruptions were gorgeous, just wait till you see them at night. These explosions come from the early days of the 2018 eruptive period. According to those present, a new blast occurred at intervals between 20 minutes and three hours. The crew heard loud detonation sounds each time and watched lava bombs fly upwards of 800 meters into the sky. Ash plumes stretched for miles with intermittent patches of volcanic lightning. Unfortunately, this eruptive period caused part of the island's southwestern side to collapse into the sea. The collapse triggered a deadly tsunami that ravaged over 186 miles of coastline in Sumatra and Java, Indonesia. Nenovka, Russia is a small town in the Astrakhan Oblast. It's home to only a few hundred people who rarely find themselves on the front page of international papers. That changed in 2015, when an event of biblical proportions swept across southern Russia. So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning, the wind had brought the locusts. Replace the word Egypt with Russia, and you get the worst thing to happen to these southern farmlands in the past 30 years. According to reports, millions of locusts covered about 800,000 hectares of farmland in southern Russia. Each measured about 8 centimeters long and ate about 10 percent of the nation's crops. It was so bad that Russia had to declare a national emergency. It had been 30 years since anything like this happened. Some farmers thought their pesticide sprays would keep the bugs at bay. They never could have anticipated a swarm of biblical proportion. If you're into glaciers, then the Patagonia region of South America is the place for you. At 16,800 square kilometers, the southern ice field is the second largest extrapolar ice sheet in the world behind the Alaskan sheets. On November 26th of 2014, a group of glacier enthusiasts took a boat to get a closer look at some calving ice walls. When they arrived, they got a little more than they bargained for when one of those crystal blue glaciers popped up from the water like a jack-in-the-box. The bright blue color you see has to do with light and how it interacts with ice. White light breaks into two wavelengths, red being the longer and blue being the shorter. Ice will absorb long wavelength red light and scatter short wavelength blue light. The longer the light travels within the ice, the bluer it appears. The jack-in-the-box phenomenon you're watching is a side effect of ice calving. Calving, in basic terms, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacial wall or ice sheet. Remember, large portions of that glacier are under the water. When they break, those submerged pieces shoot up and become icebergs. There's nothing scarier than walking through the woods alone and hearing something you don't recognize. You've probably seen enough horror movies to know that whatever it is, it's probably not friendly. Even if it is, are you sticking around to find out? On November 15th of 2019, a couple was hunting with their grandson in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, when they heard the strangest noise from deep in the woods. Instead of turning around and hightailing it out of there, they stayed put and recorded the noises. Let us know in the comments what you think this could be. It almost sounds like a gust of wind whistling through the trees. Maybe it's an animal crying for help deep in the forest. Let's keep listening to see what comes to mind. According to our hunters, they were wrapping up for the day and heading back to their car when they first heard the sound. It seemed to get louder as they drew within 500 meters of their vehicle. At that point, they were rightfully terrified and hustled back to the parking lot. The sound stumped everybody, from expert biologists to seasoned hunters. Nobody knows for sure what made that sound, and apparently, nobody ever heard it again. According to our cameraman, he's returned to the spot since posting this video and hasn't heard anything close to what he did that day. What happens when you pour water into a hot pan? It steams and evaporates, right? Well, what happens when you pour water into a pan heated beyond 193 degrees Celsius or 379 degrees Fahrenheit? If you guessed it evaporates even faster, you'd be wrong. The water actually bounces around the pan like tiny marbles on a flat surface. This is thanks to a phenomenon called the Leidenfrost effect. It's when a liquid comes in contact with a surface that's significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point. Instead of evaporating, the liquid forms an insulating vapor layer, allowing it to hover over the hot surface. Dr. Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost discovered the phenomenon while writing his book, A Tract About Some Qualities of Common Water. If you haven't read that, maybe you've seen the phenomenon in action on MythBusters when the team proved that you can use the Leidenfrost effect to protect your hand from molten metal, albeit momentarily. That's because the Leidenfrost effect doesn't last forever. The protective vapor will eventually evaporate, leaving nothing between the water and the heat source. Chefs use the Leidenfrost effect to know when their hands are hot enough to cook. It effectively turns any stainless steel pan into a nonstick. So the next time you make yourself bacon and eggs, let your pan heat up before adding any butter or oil. You'll know it's ready when you add a few drops of water and they start racing around like tiny balls of mercury. Congratulations, you've just used science to make breakfast. Bochil, Mexico is a small town in the state of Chiapas, not too far from the Guatemalan border. It's home to about 30,000 people who are always ready for a quick soccer game. Sometimes, Mother Nature wants to play too. On March 31st of 2024, as a local game was underway in Bochil, a powerful dust devil spun up on the sidelines and entered the field. We're no experts, but this interruption was probably worthy of a red card. Luckily, this dust devil wasn't strong enough to knock anyone off their feet or pick up heavy objects. If anything, it may have started throwing small rocks and pebbles at the players. Not wanting to get hit, they went to the sidelines and waited for the dust devil to pass. These types of storms are common in Mexico and other hot climates. They happen when hot surface air rises into the sky and cooler air moves down to replace it. This cycle happens repeatedly until a vortex forms. The only reason we can see them is because dirt and other tiny particles get sucked into the funnel. Notice how this dust devil is more prominent over the dirt field than on the sidelines. It's unclear what happened after the storm moved through, but we assume everyone had a good laugh and returned to finish the game. The Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is a mountainous region in southwestern China. It's home to about 425,000 people, mostly Tibetans, spread across 79,000 square miles of land. The higher you go, the colder the land gets, and permafrost sets in. Permafrost refers to plots of ground that are completely frozen for over two years. That doesn't mean that they're covered in snow, though. In fact, many permafrost regions of the world aren't. The top layers of rock and soil are loose and malleable, while the bottom layers are fused by ice. As it warms, those top layers can shift and begin sliding, leading to one of the wildest natural phenomena you'll see. This phenomenon is called solifluction. It's when massive chunks of saturated soil slowly slide down an incline. Because permafrost is impermeable, meaning water can't get through, the soil stays wet and eventually starts sliding due to gravity. According to reports, this pseudo-landslide affected several families and a farm. Thankfully, nobody seems to have been hurt. All it takes is one high-quality video to prove that aliens exist. This man from Savannah, Georgia, thought he had captured the golden footage when he spotted strange lights moving in the clouds. August 30th of 2020 was a bright and sunny day over Savannah. Our cameraman was driving down 95 when these strange lights in the clouds caught his attention. He pulled over, grabbed his phone, and began recording one of the rarest phenomena on planet Earth. Okay, I'm stopping so you can see this. Did anybody just see that? Our cameraman must have thought he was going crazy. Watch as the light comes back but then zips to a different spot. What in the world? That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever seen. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this video does not prove aliens exist. It's actually a rare phenomenon called crown flashes, also known as jumping sun dogs. Crown flashes are streamers of light that typically appear in developing storm clouds. Although the video may look bright and sunny, these are actually the early phases of a storm system developing over the Savannah area. Scientists believe crown flashes are caused by ice crystals above the cloud aligning themselves with the cloud's electric field. What we see in the video is the refraction of sunlight through these crystals. That is like super bright. The phone's not picking it up. It just disappeared. There's a faint little bit. Dude, that is crazy. When the lightning discharges, it changes the electric field. This bends the sunlight in a different direction, making it seem like the lights are bouncing around the cloud. While our Georgia cameraman didn't record any aliens that day, he did observe something that very few people have ever seen in person. If you enjoyed this video and want to see another just like it, be sure to click the link on screen now. As always, thanks for watching and be sure to tune in next time.