The ‘Catatumbo Lightning’: Venezuela’s eternal storm

By Diego Ore LAKE MARACAIBO Venezuela (Reuters) – When Venezuelan environmentalist Erik Quiroga was five years old, his mum showed him a spot on the horizon where magnificent lights appeared from a huge storm most nights, about 40 miles from his hometown of Valera at the foot of the Andes. When his family moved to Lake Maracaibo four years later, the epicenter of that eternal storm, he met close-up what would become a lifelong passion: the Catatumbo Lightning. “It amazed me. At nine, I fell in love with the lightning,” Quiroga said in an interview. …