Snow is the only enjoyable aspect of winter that I can think of. Even if the weather may not be pleasant, snow may be the start of many experiences, including skiing, snowball battles, and, it turns out, doughnuts. Almost every child who has ever played in the snow has made their own snowball. Without one, you can't start a snowman. Snow doughnuts, however, lack the advantage of social connection.

In order for them to occur, highly particular circumstances must exist in open places like the Canadian prairies. A thin, moist layer must be present on top of the powdery snow on the ground. The wind must be strong enough to begin pushing that wet layer, but not too powerful to completely destroy it. Additionally, ideally, you need an incline so that gravity can assist it. When all the components are in place, the wet snow strips the powder away like pizza crust cheese before being rolled up by the wind and gravity into a donut shape.

Everyone assumes that rain will just be water dropping from the sky. There is never a need to be concerned because the science is quite simple. Except for those very few times when the water isn't as it should be. Yellow, brown, and even black rain have all been seen to fall in the past. However, no other colored rain that people have ever witnessed is quite as unsettling as red rain. Why? because it is "blood rain," which is a really ominous name.

Writing about rain that falls like blood has a long history. It was described by Homer as a penalty meted out by Zeus himself. But it also happens in the present day and in actual life, but without an older god's wrath. The reality, which is almost entirely due to dust, is much less spectacular than the name suggests. In areas like the Sahara, wind may travel enormous distances through the atmosphere and whip up small dust particles. It can eventually shower down again in hues that are fairly brilliant and stunning, sometimes dark enough to stain garments, depending on the type of dust it picked up.

Despite how cool lightning is, it rarely occurs. Lightning must be spectacular in some way if you want it to stand out in a crowd. Exactly that is what you get when you use Catatumbo lightning. It only affects Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela and the neighborhood around it. About 160 nights' worth of storms occur in this area annually. They also deliver lightning in large quantities.

Around the lake, lightning strikes have been seen at a rate of 28 per minute. Every night, there may be up to 250 strikes per square kilometer. It has been happening for hundreds of years and appears to be specifically brought on by the local weather patterns. As lake water evaporates, the cold air from the Andes mountains mixes with the warm air, creating conditions for seemingly endless storms and dazzling lightning displays.

St. Elmo's fire is an uncommon but extremely bizarre natural phenomena, not simply an underappreciated 1980s film and song combo. Saint Erasmus, sometimes known as St. Elmo, is the patron saint of sailors, and his name refers to an electrical phenomenon that occurs during storms but is unmistakably not lightning.

Back then, seamen noticed the phenomenon around their ship's masts. It has been noticed for a very long time and most frequently took the form of a blue light. Sometimes you may even see it on the wings of airplanes. Basically, anything that gets exposed during a storm and has a point or sharp edge.

Lightning and the St. Elmo's fire are not the same thing. Actually, it's a plasma discharge. Storm-generated electricity has the ability to heat gas molecules to the point where they become plasma in modest concentrations. These seem to concentrate more readily around sharp objects, such as ship masts, but it appears that they have also been noticed near animal horns, which must be the coolest thing in the world to witness personally.

One of the most uncomfortable weather conditions you might encounter is hail. Ice chunks falling from the sky have the potential to harm people and destroy their property. Even though it may be rare, there have been a few cases of hail-related deaths over the years. Hail also has other tricks up its pocket. You might also develop hail glaciers.

Nearly anywhere, including regions where ice and snow are typically uncommon, can have freak hailstorms. If the hail stays on the ground and the weather changes to bring rain after it, you can end up with rivers of hail streaming alongside the rain. This resulted in hail being blown along and being dumped in large cliff-like structures that were as tall as 5 to 15 feet around nearby streams in New Mexico in 2004.

Naturally, a lot of extreme weather can be frightful. Few individuals have ever faced a tornado without worry about the harm it might bring. However, lightning sprites are the most scary weather you're likely to ever encounter if you want pure nightmare fodder.

These, sometimes known as red sprites, are not as uncommon as many other things, but seeing them is. They typically occur above storms and are frequently hidden from our view of the earth's surface. But when you can see them, they can resemble a scene out of a horror film about the end of the world because blood-red lightning appears to be dripping from the clouds in a way that makes you think of an alien or demonic invasion. But hey, the truth is a lot less frightening.

Lightning sprites can grow to be 30 miles large and are created in the mesosphere at least 50 miles in altitude. They appear to be generated by typical lightning strikes and are believed to disperse the positive bolt's charge vertically by balancing its charge. It is particularly challenging to observe or capture them on camera because they only last a fraction of a second.

Ball lightning sounds like it should be in an X-Men comic, and truthfully, it probably has before. However, it's also a very uncommon and improbable phenomena that actually happens. This type of lightning has a spherical appearance, as the name would imply. It only lasts for a few seconds, and there doesn't seem to be a means to artificially duplicate it or foresee where it would appear.

The fact that so many people do not believe in it and that there is little scientific investigation on the subject is largely due to this. The spheres are claimed to even pass through walls; they crackle and have a tendency to float gently in place. They are tiny. One was characterized as being grapefruit-sized and blindingly white. The balls get larger before exploding, which is frequently followed by a loud thunderclap. It's unclear how or why they develop.

There are several weather phenomena that sailors can discuss, but the green flash is one of the most peculiar ones that they have reported seeing. Because the majority of the rest of us won't encounter this in our lifetimes, it appears to be entirely fabricated. However, the flash is real and may be seen without being at water, though being at sea does help.

At sunrise and sunset, the light of the rising or setting sun briefly flashes a vivid emerald green depending on the weather. As enigmatic as the light appears to be, the cause is not. The sun's beams are obliquely directed towards us at sunrise and sunset. At this angle as opposed to when the sun is directly overhead, the atmosphere has a different ability to scatter light rays.

Only yellow-hued light is visible since the majority of the sun's light's color, particularly those shades of blue, is filtered out by our atmosphere. However, there is a fleeting window when the sun is in the proper position when the light reflecting away from us might still manage to sneak through in a spectacular flash of green.

For good reason, the majority of individuals will never come across a ghost apple in their lifetime. For the weather to create one of these, a really uncommon collection of conditions must exist. In 2019, pictures started to circulate online, and some individuals immediately called them fakes. Though less eerie than the name suggests, the entire story is much more fascinating.

A ghost apple resembles a perfectly shaped apple on a tree, however it's made of ice instead of fruit. You can understand why folks might be dubious. However, the reality appears to be the outcome of real apples colliding with the arctic vortex. If the circumstances are ideal, freezing rain can quickly coat and frost over an apple, producing a flawless apple shell. However, the actual apple itself cannot endure those adverse circumstances. Fruit decays and leaks out the bottom, leaving a precise replica in the ice.

The residents of Oakville, Washington, a village of less than 600 people, noticed that the rain was not falling as it should have in the summer of 1994. On that particular day, the rain was goopy and heavy, resembling Jell-O splatters dropping from the sky. The rice grain-sized lumps were not large, but they did gather on the ground to form a jelly-like covering. Over the following few weeks, the same gloopy rain poured several more times in and around the Oakville region. Then it vanished.

Locals started to feel like they had the flu. A microbiologist examined the slime and found that although it contained lots of germs, the bugs weren't hazardous. Those who contracted it said that it led to a flu that, in some cases, lingered for several months.

Some others believe that the goo materialized on the ground rather than falling from the sky. Residents who were questioned for an Unsolved Mysteries episode reported it dropped, and one man even claimed to have been in his car at the time and struggle to get it off the windshield. The phenomenon hasn't been verified or explained yet.