It is a not particularly esteemed journalistic reflex to concoct lists around January 1. I’ll take a risk and say that it started with doing recaps of the past year: the best of, the worst of, the most this or that. Since then it has spread, mostly because it is a lazy kind of way to make your word quota during a time when you’re lazing around with friends and family. And possibly hungover.
(“Taking a risk”—that is, claiming something is true without any real research or knowledge—is another lazy kind of journalism, which I will succumb to only this once, because it is my last weekend of holiday lazing.)
We were going to take the high road and neither prepare nor link to a New Year’s list. Then I came across Lonely Planet’s compilation of “extreme weather destinations.” About half of these are places where the weather is just crappy. Terrible, but so extremely so that they might warrant your inspection. On the upside, each gives you a story to tell. On the downside, frostbite and heat exhaustion.
The other half are genuinely intriguing, meccas of meteorological anomalies. Northern lights! Moonbows over the Zambezi River! And a place of near constant, silent, nighttime jungle lightning.
My favorite from the list is Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, which in September and October is visited by Morning Glories, which are rare “roll clouds”—formations that can be up to 1,000 kilometers long and up to 2 kilometers high. Think about that for a minute: a cloud like a fluffy white baguette, stretching horizon to horizon, even when you’re flying above it. They are also known for being low (100-200 meters off the ground) and fast (over 35 m.p.h.).
You can check it on video here. It’s fascinating material and especially good if you like a lot of didgeridoos in your soundtrack.
So there. A list for 2013. I’m not proud of it. But now we all have a goal for 2013: On to the Gulf of Carpentaria!
Photo of Morning Glory cloud formation taken from a plane near Burketown (plane heading to Normanton) in Queensland, Australia (2009), by Mick Petroff, via Wikimedia Commons.
