1)EXPLORE
CRYSTAL CAVES INSIDE A GLACIER
Drive along Iceland’s iconic Ring Road and you’ll pass many
enormous glaciers. Inside some of them are glorious ice caves with translucent
walls that produce weird light in hundreds of shades of blue. It’s a
photographer’s dream. “Most of them [the caves] are formed by water running
either through tunnels in the ice, or on the ground underneath the glacier,”
says landscape photographer Iurie Belegurschi at Iceland Photo Tours, who takes
groups into the ice caves within the vast Vatnajökull glacier in southeastern
Iceland. Although there are many ice caves in Iceland, Vatnajökull’s are the
most accessible. Safety is still important, though. “It’s safe to visit ice
caves from November to March when it’s coldest outside and they’re stable,”
says Belegurschi. “But always get a professional, local ice cave guide, who
will provide you with all the safety gear and know exactly which caves are safe
to enter.”
WHERE TO GO: Southeastern Iceland
WHEN TO GO: November-March
2)WITNESS
A DESERT SUPERBLOOM
Occasionally, the normally arid Mojave Desert, Sonoran
Desert, and Chihuahuan Desert will burst into a carpet of yellow, purple, and
pink flowers. This is a superbloom, and it happens if there’s significant
rainfall between September and January. “Each big bloom is different – it all
depends on how much rain falls, and where,” says Ed Madej, a retired
geographer, botanist and volunteer researcher at Death Valley National Park.
“There’s one substantial wildflower bloom every 5.3 years on average, and a
superbloom on average once every 11.2 years.”
WHERE TO GO: Death Valley National Park, California, the USA
WHEN TO GO: February-March
3)WATCH
ROCKETS LAUNCHING
“Every launch is very impressive and exciting because you
don’t know what will happen until the last moment,” says Dr Ken Kremer, a
science journalist and veteran of over 80 rocket launches. “You hear the fire
and fury for several minutes – seeing a launch in person is a billion times
better than watching on TV.” You could do worse than visiting NASA’s Kennedy
Space Center in Florida, or Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The current
hot ticket, though, is going to watch a SpaceX reusable rocket launch, then
land back at Cape Canaveral.
WHERE TO GO: Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia or Kennedy
Space Center, Florida
BEST TIME TO GO:
Check www.kennedyspacecenter.com or www.nasa.gov
4)BEHOLD
A NEVERENDING LIGHTNING STORM
Think lightning never strikes twice? The odds are more
generous over the mouth of the Catatumbo River at Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela,
which hosts lightning storms for up to 297 nights a year, thanks to some
freakish topographical conditions. Lake Maracaibo is a huge body of water
surrounded by warm swamps, and encircled by the Andes. The intense solar
radiation heats up the water, slowly saturating the atmosphere with water
vapour. When cold winds push down from the Andes, they force this warm, moist
air upwards, creating the perfect conditions for the development of dense,
lightning-bearing cumulonimbus clouds. “Watching the Catatumbo lightning is an
experience you will get nowhere else,” says Jonas Piontek, a German
photographer who has travelled to Lake Maracaibo twice to capture the storms.
“You are basically isolated from everyone: no network, no internet, no real civilisation
around for a radius of at least 50km. It’s just you and nature, and one of the
best shows on Earth.”
WHERE TO GO: Catatumbo Camp, Venezuela (www.
catatumbotour.com)
WHEN TO GO:
October-November
5)PEER
INTO HELL
As attractions go, the Darvaza Gas Crater in Turkmenistan’s
Karakum Desert is as strange as it is scorching. Back in 1971, Soviet
geologists were searching the area for oil fields. Unbeknown to them, they had
started their exploratory drilling on top of a cavern filled with natural gas.
The ground collapsed, swallowing their equipment and opening up a huge crater.
Fearing that toxic gases could harm local people, it was set on fire. This is
called ‘flaring’, and is a familiar way of dealing with such a problem. But it
backfired at Darvaza. Instead of burning for the expected two weeks, it’s been
blazing non-stop ever since it was ignited.At around 60 x 20m, the largest
crater is now a tourist attraction, which is referred to as the ‘Gates to
Hell’. It’s best visited from Ashgabat, the country’s capital, about 250km
south.Take an organised tour, specifically one that visits the crater at night
when it’s at its most spectacular.
WHERE TO GO: Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan
WHEN TO GO: Anytime
6)GAZE
AT LIQUID FIRE
“So you’re walking through a valley and all of a sudden a
waterfall catches on fire,” says photographer Dave Gordon. He is speaking about
a phenomenon that takes place in Yosemite Valley’s Horsetail Falls during late
February, when light from the setting Sun causes the flowing water to glow
yellow, orange and red, mimicking fire. “It occurs once a year, for a few days
in a row, each lasting mere minutes,” says Gordon. “So in total your chance of
seeing a Yosemite waterfall turn into what looks like lava, or flowing fire, is
about 60 minutes per year.” The spectacle relies on many things; the angle of
the Sun as it sets, recent rainfall levels that feed the waterfall, and a clear
sky. “There is something spiritual in being able to visually witness the astrophysics
of our Solar System play out,” says Gordon. “How many points in time had to
line up perfectly to make this exact moment happen? It’s nature at its absolute
best.” Yosemite National Park also happens to be one of the most photogenic
locations on the planet, making the Horsetail Falls phenomenon a favourite with
photographers, so expect a stake-out if conditions are right.
WHERE TO GO: Yosemite National Park, California, the USA
WHEN TO GO: Late February
7)SEE
COLOURFUL LIGHTS IN THE NIGHT SKY
The Northern Lights are more familiar, but the Southern
Lights are well worth a visit too. “Dunedin in New Zealand is probably the
easiest place to go if you want to see the Southern Lights, but it’s only got
about as much chance as northern Scotland or England,” says Dr Melanie
Windridge, author of Aurora: In Search Of The Northern Lights. Other good
locations include Ushuaia, South Georgia Island, the Falkland Islands and
Antarctica. “The trouble with the Southern Lights is that they happen mainly
over the ocean or in Antarctica,” says Windridge. Auroras occur when charged
particles emanating from the Sun strike atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, causing
the electrons of the atoms to move to a higher-energy state. “When they hit
oxygen they emit green, and also red higher up, while nitrogen emits blue and
purple colours,” says Windridge.
WHERE TO GO: Dunedin, New Zealand
WHEN TO GO:
March-September
8)OBSERVE
HUNDREDS OF SHOOTING STARS
When comets tumble through the Solar System, they leave dust
and rock in their wake. As Earth orbits the Sun, its path takes it through this
debris. These chunks of space rock burn up as they pass into Earth’s
atmosphere, causing a mesmerising light show. Although you can see a shooting
star on any given night, there are a number of predictable meteor showers
throughout the year. In December, stargazers watching the Geminids meteor
shower can enjoy more than 100 shooting stars an hour. Meanwhile, May’s Eta
Aquariids and October’s Orionids are worth a look – both are leftovers of the
last visit of Halley’s Comet in 1986. However, the top choice is August’s
Perseids, whose meteors often leave mesmerising trails in the sky. They’re the
leftovers of Comet Swift-Tuttle’s passage through the Solar System in 1992.
“Your best chance to see shooting stars is after midnight because then you are
on the nightside of Earth as it hits the meteors head-on,” says John Barentine,
programme manager at the International Dark-Sky Association in Phoenix,
Arizona, the USA.
WHERE TO GO: Dark Sky Parks (www,darksky.org)
WHEN TO GO: August or
December
Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it out to the USA, this
summer to witness the solar eclipse – they happen somewhere on Earth every 18
months. The spectacle is brief, but dramatic. “The sky suddenly darkens, and,
if you’re watching with eclipse glasses, you will see the crescent of the Sun
rapidly shrink and break up into a series of beads,” says eclipse cartographer
Michael Zeiler. “Then you see a beautiful diamond ring around the Moon.”
Moments later, the Sun’s corona – its super-heated outer atmosphere – appears
as an ice-white halo. To catch the next one, head out to Chile or Argentina for
July 2, 2019.
WHERE TO GO: Chile or Argentina
WHEN TO GO: July 2 2019
10)CHASE
STORMS IN TORNADO ALLEY
“I’ve been a storm chaser and spotter since I was little,”
says Nicholas Langley from the group Tornado Alley Chasers and Spotters. “I
would sit outside my house in Tennessee watching storms roll in. It fascinates
me how clouds can form out of thin air, then explode into monster supercells.”
A tornado is caused by updraughts and downdraughts of unstable
air during a thunderstorm, when a wind shear tilts to form an upright vortex. However,
storm chasing comes with huge risks, particularly traffic accidents. “You get
tunnel vision out there and you don’t see the surrounding area – you just see
the tornado,” he says. Tornado Alley is generally regarded to include the US
states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Tornadoes are typically active
in those states between March and late May. Other areas of the world where
violent tornadoes are frequent include an area of the Pampas lowlands in
Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil, and coastal Bangladesh on the Bay of
Bengal.
WHERE TO GO: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Nebraska, the USA
BEST TIME TO GO:
March-May
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