Most of us known the idom, lightening never strikes the same place twice. This is a way of saying that an extraordinary thing is unlikely to happen to the same person twice in a row. It is based on the fact that during a storm lightning is rarely going to hit the same target on the ground a second time.

That is true, unless you happen to be in the mouth of the Catatumbo River at Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. The area is renown for it’s lightning storms. In fact climatologists have decreed that a storm rages here 297 nights a year. This is because of some very unusual topographic conditions.

The huge Lake Maracaibo is surrounded by warm swamps and both are circled by the Andes mountain range. As the sun heats the lake the water vapor content in the atmosphere increases. The cool air blowing down from the Andes forces the warm, water laden air up high to form the dense cumulonimbus clouds.

Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as lightning bearing clouds. As their density in the area above the lake increases, the possibility of a lightning storm does as well. It would make an interesting science project to study just which month has the most storms.