Impossible Places In Nature That Really Exist

Believe it or not, the real fact is that there is a desert in the middle of Alaska! Let's explore a whole bunch of natural anomalies that should be impossible, but exist anyway!

Desert In Alaska

Alaska is one of the coldest places on Earth, with temperatures dropping down to a bone-chilling -30°F in winter. Most of the state is filled with glaciers and snow during winter, but there’s one place that doesn’t play by the rules. Kobuk Valley National Park in northwestern Alaska is home to a very peculiar feature. Covering around 20,500 acres, or 15,000 football fields, are 3 sets of sand dunes! Yes, sand dunes, the ones you’d usually find in super-hot deserts, not freezing cold Alaska!

Saying that, sand dunes can also be found near beaches, when sand washed inland is blown by onshore winds and trapped by debris or plants. And yet, the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes are 70 miles away from the nearest coast! Turns out, it actually owes its existence to a geological phenomenon that occurred during the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago.

When the glaciers in this area receded, large chunks of ice churned over the underlying rocks they covered, gradually grinding them down to fine sand. Over time, strong winds deposited the sand into the Kobuk Valley. And here, under the shelter of the nearby Baird and Waring Mountains, giant sand dunes formed, giving Alaska its very own desert!

Eye Of The Sahara

While you may not have been expecting a sandy landscape in the middle of the freezing Alaskan countryside, the same can’t be said for Mauritania. After all, this country found in northwestern Africa is 75% desert. But, endless as the sand seems, there’s one bizarre formation that breaks up the desert scenery.

Found near Ouadane, in west-central Mauritania, is this curious circular feature, known as the Richat Structure. Stretching across a staggering 25 miles, it’s so large it can be observed from space. When viewed from such heights, it resembles a giant eye, giving it the nickname, the "Eye of the Sahara".

Cool as it looks from up high, there’s something worrying about a giant eye-shaped presence emerging from the ground. Initially, it was believed to be an impact structure; a dent on the Earth’s surface caused by a large meteor impact. While conspiracists out there believe this formation is the home of the "Lost City of Atlantis", first described by Plato as being arranged in concentric rings.

As much as I’d like to believe I’ve solved the age-old Atlantis debate, there’s another theory that more accurately describes the eerie eye formation. It’s likely the Richat Structure was actually formed by volcanic activity lifting the landscape around the eye, millions of years ago.

After the volcanism died down, wind and water eroded the domed layers of rock, until the structure caved in on itself and eroded away, leaving the circular rings. That’s the leading theory, so it’s not known for sure. Still, it's better to hedge your bets with the scientists and geologists over the tin-hat wearing conspiracy theorists!

Lake Kaindy

The Kolsay Lakes National Park in southeastern Kazakhstan is home to an array of picturesque lakes and breathtaking valleys. But there’s one lake in particular that’s become known not for its beauty, but its peculiar appearance. Like all the other lakes in the park, the 1,300 foot-long Lake Kaindy has crystal clear waters, but it’s got something else too, which are trees poking out the water, and entire forest in fact.

How does a forest grow inside a lake? Back in 1911, an earthquake in the region triggered a landslide which blocked a gorge, creating a natural dam. It didn’t take long for the dam to fill with water from the nearby Kaindy River, and voila, Kaindy Lake formed.

The thing is, within the dam was also a forest, so as the lake filled up to a depth of 98 feet, trees within the forest became submerged, creating this leafy lake. All things considered, Lake Kaindy is one "tree-mendous" anomaly of nature!

Lake Cachet II

Over 11,000 miles southwest of Kazakhstan’s Kolsay Lakes National Park is Lake Cachet II, a glacial lake located in the Patagonian region of southern Chile. At first glance, you might assume this is just another normal body of water. However, on 31st March 2012, onlookers were astonished to discover the 2-square-mile lake had disappeared completely!

But how could that happen? Temperatures here only average around 60°F during March, so it’s not like the water would’ve dried up. Even more shockingly, that wasn’t the first time Lake Cachet II disappeared, it’d vanished two months before. In fact, in the 5 years prior to March 2012, the lake vanished 10 times! What, or who, was stealing and replacing millions of gallons of water?

Luckily, there’s a natural explanation for this freaky phenomena. When temperatures in Patagonia rise slightly higher than normal, it can weaken the nearby Colonia Glacier, which acts as a dam, trapping water inside Lake Cachet II. So, when the Colonia Glacier weakens, water tunnels through. And with that, some 52 million cubic gallons of water gush out the lake, traveling downstream into the Baker River, leaving Lake Cachet II dry.

Pink Lake Hillier

We couldn’t complete our tour of the world’s wackiest lakes without making a stop at Middle Island, found on the coast of Western Australia. It’s here we find Lake Hillier; a stretch of water that’s gained a reputation for its peculiarly pretty appearance.

Stretching 2,000 feet in length, this lake’s surrounded by a rim of sand and dense woodland, but what makes it stand out is the pink water! While it may look like part of the Barbie film set, it’s color is down to the water’s exceptionally high salt concentration. This creates an extreme environment that’s inhospitable to most forms of life, but not all!

Scientific analysis revealed the lake contains almost 500 extremophiles, organisms that thrive in extreme environments. Many of these organisms, like purple sulfur bacteria and a red-colored algae called Dunaliella salina, give the lake it’s vibrant pink hue. So, surprisingly, despite the unnatural color, it’s safe to swim in. Just make sure not to swallow any of that water, unless you want a mouthful of salt and algae!

Mount Taranaki

Another Australasian attraction, just over the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, is Mount Taranaki. This dormant stratovolcano is the second highest peak in New Zealand’s North Island, reaching a dizzying height of 8,261 feet. But it’s not the elevation of this thing that makes it so eye-catching. To get a real sense of what makes Mount Taranaki so strange, you’ve got to take a look at it from above. Anyone who’s flown over Mount Taranaki will see it’s surrounded by an almost perfect circle of trees.

But before you start thinking New Zealand’s North Island is an alien base camp, this strange circle is actually down to human intervention. In 1881, a six mile circular radius surrounding the dormant volcano was protected as a forest reserve, now known as Egmont National Park.

In the years since, the area surrounding the park boundary were used as intensive-farmed dairy pastures. As a result, it led to a change in vegetation, with much of the forest surrounding the protected circular radius being cut down for farming. Little did those farmers know they’d go on to make one of the world’s most inexplicably satisfying satellite images!

Earthquake Lights

Anyone who’s lived through an earthquake will tell you that this ground-shaking, building-breaking experience is terrifying. But in 2021, during a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, the citizens of Mexico City didn’t just experience the shaking and breaking; the sky also lit up with a series of bright flashes!

It may sound like bad luck getting hit with an earthquake and a lightning storm at the same time, except, this isn’t lightning, these are actually known as Earthquake Lights. In the last few years alone, these lights have been spotted during earthquakes in China, Japan and New Zealand.

'Earthquake light' appears in sky above Japanese city by Guardian News

Tin-foil-hat-wearers all over the world theorize that those flashes were triggered by some green guys in a UFO. But the more likely explanation is that the lights are caused by the release of energy during an earthquake. Surges of energy released during the quake instantly ionize pockets of air above ground, producing the bright light.

Another theory proposes that piezoelectricity is responsible for the lights. This is the process where certain quartz-bearing rocks generate an electrical charge under stress. When an earthquake causes quartz rocks in the earth to fracture, these electrical charges may rise to the surface and ionize air, producing light.

They may even be down to rocks grinding together in the fault zone, producing so much heat that their glow is visible at the surface. But no one knows for certain what causes them, so even the conspiracy theorists are still in with a chance!

Catatumbo Lightning

Every year, thousands of tourists flock to an area where the Catatumbo River meets Lake Maracaibo on the northern crest of Venezuela to marvel at the area’s lightning storms. We’ve all seen lightning before, except here, it isn’t just one lightning strike that cracks through the sky. Around half the nights of the year, there’s an average of 28 strikes per minute, lasting for up to 9 hours!

This is a meteorological phenomenon known as Catatumbo Lightning! In all, some 1.6 million bolts strike down in this region every year! Unsurprisingly, those stats have crowned this as the place with the highest concentration of lightning in the world.

The remote lake where lightning strikes 1.6 million times per year – BBC REEL by BBC Global

The question is, how? Previously, scientists speculated that the lightning may be caused by uranium deposits in the bedrock attracting lightning strikes. Another theory was that methane produced by swamps and the massive oil deposits in the area were responsible for the weird weather.

But, it wasn’t until 2015 that scientists discovered the true cause of Lake Maracaibo’s infinite lightning. The lake is surrounded by mountains that trap warm winds from the Caribbean sea. These winds collide with the much cooler air coming down from the mountain peaks, forcing the air up, and creating a conveyor belt of never-ending thunderclouds!

Colorful Cloud

Back in 2022, the residents of Haikou, in southern China were left open-mouthed as something magisterial floated up above them. While it may look like a holy ball of fluorescent candy floss hovering in the air, there are actually two clouds. That big ball of fluff in the middle is a cumulus cloud, one of those common clouds we all drew as kids. But what makes this sight so spectacular is the rainbow ring that surrounds it.

Locals amazed as they spot rainbow-coloured scarf cloud by Newsflare

Known as a pileus cloud, these things form when air surrounding a cumulus cloud is rising so quickly it condenses into a hood-shaped cloud. As for the cool colors, when incoming sunlight passes through these clouds, it collides with tiny water droplets, refracting the light rays into different colors of the rainbow.

Breathtaking as these clouds look, don’t get too familiar with the site of them. They usually only last a few minutes, as the growing cumulus cloud quickly engulfs them. And, as for those rainbow colors, that’ll only happen if sunlight hits the clouds at the right angle. Anyone who got to see this in-person must’ve been on cloud nine!

Lenticular Clouds

If you thought that colorful fluffball was out of the ordinary, then get a load of this next crazy cloud. These fluffy UFO-shaped things are known as lenticular clouds. In fact, they look so much like flying saucers, they’re one of the most common explanations for UFO sightings!

These curious creations form when a substantial obstruction, like a mountain, forces air to rise, like ripples forming in a river over a rock. This causes a wave-like motion in the air flow, the rising air cools at the top of the mountain and condenses into the lens-shaped cloud, like this one at Klyuchevskaya Sopka in Russia.

But it’s not just the shape of these things that’s fascinating. Usually, clouds are carried along the sky by winds, but lenticular clouds tend to remain in one place. However, these clouds are in a constant state of change. The flow of moist air on the windward side of the mountain replenishes the cloud, while the dry air flowing down the leeside of the mountain dissipates it. If the air waves are stable, this process can look so seamless, it doesn’t even look like the cloud is changing at all!

Raining Frogs In Serbia

Lenticular clouds aren’t the only odd objects that have left people transfixed on the sky, though. Back in June 2005, residents of Odžaci, in northwestern Serbia were confused, and a little creeped, when hundreds of strange green blobs rained down from the sky. But as people took a closer look, they discovered these mystery blobs had limbs! Turns out it was literally raining frogs!

While this may sound like the plot for a whacky movie, it actually happens more frequently than you’d think. In the 21st century, there’ve been cases of frog rain in Japan, Hungary and Uruguay. There’ve also been cases of snakes, spiders, birds and even fish dropping down from the clouds.

So, what’s the reason for the raining critters? Their downfall is a waterspout, a kind of tornado that forms over a body of water. Like tornadoes, waterspouts consist of a low-pressure central vortex surrounded by a rotating funnel of updrafts, with the rotating winds able to reach upwards of 113 mph!

This can make their central column strong enough to hoover up any critters it passes over. This transports the animals up into the sky, and as the waterspouts hit land and eventually die down, their unwilling passengers are sent crashing down to earth. Forget cats and dogs, it’s actually raining snakes and frogs!

Red Rain In Kerala

While witnessing a rain of frogs and fish would be pretty disturbing, it’s nothing compared to what the people of Kerala in southern India once had to deal with. From July to September 2001, the region experienced sporadic, but heavy downpours, not of rain, but of blood! Well, at least it looked like blood. It turned out each inch of rain contained over 220 million red particles.

Physicist Godfrey Louis collected samples of the red rain, and after studying it under a microscope, he found it contained no sand or dust. Instead, the rain was filled with strange red cells! Even stranger, Louis found no evidence of DNA in the cells, ruling out any known biological cells, so, again, definitely not blood. That led Louis to believe that these cells could be extraterrestrial!

He hypothesized that these cells could’ve come from a comet that disintegrated in Earth’s upper atmosphere and then seeded clouds as the red cells floated down to Earth. Convincing as that sounds, it doesn’t explain how debris from a comet continued to fall in the same area for 2 months, all while being unaffected by winds.

Scientific examination of the red rainwater by Kerala’s Center of Earth Science Studies revealed a different cause. They found that the particles appeared to be spores. Specifically, they belonged to a local orange-colored algae called Trentepohlia. It’s possible that a large bloom of these airborne spores around Kerala mixed with clouds in the area led to the red-colored rain. While it may not be the most fascinating of explanations, I’d rather it be spores than real blood.

Ice Tsunami

Back in 2019, in the Canadian providence of Ontario, onlookers at the edge of Lake Eerie were astonished to see a tsunami heading straight towards them. But this tsunami wasn’t comprised of a towering watery wave. What they witnessed was an ice tsunami.

Lake Erie had some 13.5 billion tons of ice covering the surface, and it had suddenly surged towards the shore, piling up in places as high as 40 feet. Can you imagine how scary watching a wave of ice, the size of a 4 story-building, come hurtling towards you would be?

So, what was the cause of this terrifying tidal wave of ice? Usually, tsunamis are caused by an earthquake suddenly displacing huge, long waves. Ice tsunamis are similarly driven by the force of currents, but this doesn’t normally come from underwater earthquakes. Instead, as temperatures rise, the ice covering the water breaks up. Then, if the winds pick up, strong waves push the large chunks of ice towards shore.

When all this ice reaches the shoreline, the force of the waves, winds and billions of tons of ice behind it forces it to pile up into giant mounds. If it’s travelling quick enough, the incoming ice can even force its way onto the mainland, damaging trees and swallowing up entire buildings!

Spook Hill

With its much more tropical climate, Florida doesn’t experience surges of ice rushing onto the shore. But that doesn’t mean this place isn’t home to its own strange quirk of nature. One road here has been given the nickname Spook Hill. You might think it’s haunted, but that’s not the case. This hill actually got its spook from the way if defies gravity. By some miracle, cars parked in neutral at the bottom of the hill appear to roll backwards up the hill!

Car Appears to Roll Uphill at Spook Hill by Backroad Planet

As much as I’d like to believe that Spook Hill is governed by a car-dragging ghost, this strange phenomena is actually down to an optical illusion. Spook Hill is one of many Gravity Hills found throughout the world. A Gravity Hill is a spot where the layout of the surrounding land produces an optical illusion, making a slight downhill slope appear to be an uphill climb. Meaning, a car left in neutral appears to be rolling uphill against gravity, when in reality it’s rolling downhill!

But how does it appear to be uphill when it’s really downhill? All gravity hills have one thing in common: the horizon is either curved or obstructed from view. Horizons provide us with a reference point for judging a slope. If the road is surrounded by trees, rather than buildings then we don’t have a reliable guide to judge the hill on. So, we may perceive a road to be ascending uphill, when, in reality it’s actually downhill, meaning things will still roll downwards according to gravity’s pull.

Kummakivi Balancing Rock

Gravity hills aren’t the only odd anomalies of nature that seem to disregard the laws of physics, though. In the dense forestry of Ruokolahti in southeastern Finland is a gigantic 23 foot-long, 550-ton boulder, known as Kummakivi. While a giant boulder in the middle of the Finnish forest isn’t that otherworldly, a look underneath this colossal rock reveals it’s actually being held up, not by the forest floor, but a smaller rock.

As much as this looks like the work of Photoshop, this rare balancing rock act is real. The question is, how has this precariously placed boulder stayed balanced for around 12,000 years? Finnish folklore suggests that giants or trolls carried the rock to the forest, before balancing it on its plinth. Geologists, however, have provided another theory.

It’s believed the giant boulder was transported to its spot by melting glaciers around 12,000 years ago, and was left stranded on top of the bottom rock once the ice had melted completely. Still, that doesn’t explain how this formation stays in perfect balance. Despite appearances, the bottom rock is large enough to provide a solid foundation for the entire structure. Kummakivi also has a low center of gravity, with the rock being wider than it is tall, increasing the structure’s stability. It's also possible that over time, the point where the two rocks meet has eroded so that they now fit together.

Patomskiy Crater

For miles and miles around in southeastern Siberia, green forestland dominates the landscape. That is, until you stumble across this massive mound in the image below made up entirely of shattered limestone blocks. In all, it stretches across 520 feet and reaches a height of 130 feet! That means this thing is over 3 times longer than an Olympic-sized swimming pool and about the same height as a 10 story building: this is the Patomskiy Crater.

Since its discovery back in 1949, scientists have scratched their heads over what exactly caused it. Some believe the crater was caused by a meteorite, which sunk under the earth upon its impact. However, no meteorite fragments have been found in the area. The cone shape at the top of the mound has led others to believe that this is a cinder cone volcano. But no evidence of volcanic materials have been found in the area either.

A more wacky theory suggests this was once the site of nuclear experimentation. The Cold War saw a huge increase in secret nuclear testing sites. Could the Patomskiy Crater have been caused by a nuclear bomb? It does look similar in size and shape to craters officially recorded during subsurface nuclear bomb tests.

Naka Cave

Speaking of rare rocks, let’s pay a visit to Phu Langka National Park. This place of outstanding natural beauty in east Thailand is revered for its beautiful waterfalls, streams, and wild flowers. But, there’s something far more chilling that brings huge swathes of tourists to this hotspot. Tucked away amongst the dense foliage is Naka Cave, which consists of a giant rock that has a surface resembling serpent’s scales, as well as large stone slabs that look like a python’s head.

Some believe that this isn’t a rock at all, but the remains of an ancient supersized snake, say the Titanboa? These 43 feet-long, 2,500 pound-heavy serpents slithered along the earth around 60 million years ago, before cooling climates drove them to extinction or so we believed.

Perhaps this particular Titanboa wasn’t killed by an ice age, but by a volcanic eruption, preserving the snake in volcanic ash for millions of years? Sounds farfetched, but preservations just like this have been found at the sites of famous volcanic eruptions, such as Pompei!

In Buddhist folklore, the gigantic snake rock at Phu Langka National Park takes on the name of Naga; a half-snake half-human that dwells in the netherworld. Legend has it that the nearby Mekong River was created by 2 Naga kings slithering through the area. Who knows, perhaps this snake rock is actually a Naga in the grip of an ancient slumber?

Over the years, internet addicts have claimed the stone has shifted position, and that it’s actually still alive! In reality, this picture below wasn’t taken in Thailand, but in a park in Laos, more than 200 miles north of Phu Langka National Park. Great! Now we’ve got two potential petrified super snakes to worry about.

However, geologists claim these aren’t the remains of Titanboa or Naga; they’re just sun-cracked rocks that are more than 100,000 years old. The temperature fluctuation between night and day have caused the rocks to expand and contract over and over, eventually cracking the rock. Overtime, water eroded the edges of the cracks further, resulting in the smooth, snake-scale look!

I hope you were amazed at the impossible places in nature that really exist. Thanks for reading!