We live in truly a wild and wonderful place. There are many things about this world that you’ll learn that will totally take you by surprise. These 30 incredible and natural phenomena are just some of them.

Most people will never witness all of these strange natural events, but you need to know they are real (and definitely not the result of Photoshop and digital editing). There is more to see on Earth than just what is in your backyard or hometown. This is some of the craziest stuff.

1.) Spider web “floods:” Near Wagga Wagga, Australia, these spiders fled violent floodwaters.

Their webs covered the land like snow.

2.) Namibia’s mysterious Fairy Circles: No one knows why exactly these happened, but many believe that termite activities are responsible for their creation.

3.) Murmurations: Large flocks of birds move together as one, almost creating a completely new, sentient being.

4.) Dirty thunderstorms/lightning: This happens when lightning occurs in a volcanic plume.

5.) Frozen (and flammable) ice bubbles: These methane bubbles formed beneath the surface of Alberta’s Lake Abraham.

6.) The Catumbo Lightning: This is a special event which occurs during 140 to 160 nights a year, only over mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.

7.) Christmas Island’s red crab migration: This occurs annually. More than 40 million crabs migrate into the ocean to breed.

Most of the roads are closed during the migration.

8.) Monarch butterfly migration: Millions of monarch butterflies migrate from from the USA and Canada to Mexico.

They cover thousands of miles. Not 1 single butterfly can make the entire round trip.

9.) Circumhorizontal arcs: Also misleadingly known as fire rainbows, these rainbows occur when plate-shaped ice crystals form in high level cirrus clouds, refracting light.

10.) Underwater crop circles: These designs are created by male pufferfish during their mating dance, attempting to attract females.

11.) Spherical boulders in New Zealand: These boulders were freed from the mudstone that surrounded them over time via coastal erosion.

12.) The Door to Hell: This is a large gas fire in Turkmenistan that scientists accidentally lit in 1971… and is still burning.

13.) The Great Blue Hole: This is a large submarine sinkhole off the coast of Belize. It’s over 300m across and 124m deep.

14.) Undulatus asperatus: The Cloud Appreciation Society would like this to be officially known as a separate cloud formation. It would be the first new type of cloud recognized since 1951.

15.) The Sardine Run: This occurs May through July when billions of sardines move north along the east coast of South Africa.

Their numbers are overwhelming and the migration can cause quite the feeding frenzy.

16.) The Giant’s Causeway: This area of coast in Northern Ireland consist of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption.

17.) Sailing stones in Death Valley: This geological phenomenon is hard to explaine. Rocks move along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

Some people believe small “ice rafts” form below the stones and move them, but it isn’t a widely accepted theory.

18.) Tidal bores: You can find these on the Amazon in Brazil and the Severn in England. Tidal bores are when the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travels up a river against the flow.

19.) The Flowering Desert: When rainfall is unusually high in the Atacama Desert, Chile, the region will flower beautifully.

20.) Snow chimneys: On Mount Erebus, Antarctica, these chimneys form on top of the southernmost active volcano on Earth.

21.) Lenticular clouds: These lens-shaped clouds form over Mount Olympus, in the troposphere. Because of their shape, they have been offered as an explanation for some UFO sightings.

22.) Mammatus clouds: This meteorological phenomenon occurs when “pouches” hang underneath the base of a cloud.

23.) Polar stratospheric clouds: These are also known as nacreous clouds (from nacre, or mother of pearl, due to their iridescence).

24.) Tanzania’s Lake Natron: This salt lake is fed by mineral-rich hot springs. It is the only regular breeding area in East Africa for the 2.5 million lesser flamingoes.

25.) The Spotted Lake: Canada is home to this saline endorheic alkali lake that ontains some of the highest quantities of magnesium sulfate, calcium and sodium sulphates in the world.

26.) Bioluminescent waves: Various species of phytoplankton are known to bioluminesce. When these phytoplankton hit the shore in the Maldives, they begin to glow.

27.) Red tide: This is when bioluminescent dinoflagellates and the right conditions mix to create a dark red glow in the water.

28.) Light pillars: This optical phenomenon is just a reflection of sunlight or moonlight by ice crystals that are present in the Earth’s atmosphere.

29.) Rainbow eucalyptus: When strips of outer bark are shed annually at different times on this eucalyptus trees, they turn different colors.

The “rainbow” effect is quite beautiful.

30.) Frost flowers: These ice crystals form ice in extremely cold, calm conditions when (around -7.6F).

31.) The Moskstraumen: This is a tidal whirlpool, one of the strongest in the world. It forms in the Norweigian Sea (this may not be an actual picture of the whirlpool, as they are rare to come by).

(H/T BuzzFeed)

Consider yourself extremely lucky if you have ever seen one of these events in person. This is the kind of natural phenomena that just seems too insane to really exist. Share these awesome photos with your friends by clicking below.