Catatumbo: Venezuela's vanishing lightning

Darkness never lasted long in the skies over Lake Maracaibo. An hour after dusk the show would begin: a lightning bolt, then another, and another, until the whole horizon flashed white
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

The electrical storms, a product of a unique meteorological phenomenon, have lit up nights in this corner of Venezuela for thousands of years
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

The spectacle, one of the longest single displays of continuous lightning in the world, lasts up to nine hours a night. On average it is visible over 160 nights a year from 250 miles away. Lightning bolts discharged from cloud to cloud strike 16 to 40 times a minute. They can reach an intensity of 400,000 amps but are so high thunder is inaudible
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

But the phenomenon, which once unleashed up to 20,000 bolts a night, stopped in late January. Not a single bolt has been seen since
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

Residents in the village of Congo Mirador, a collection of wooden huts on stilts at the phenomenon’s epicentre, are puzzled and anxious about its absence
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

Fishermen used the lightning to guide them at night
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

It has been five weeks and there is no sign of nocturnal flashes
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

Catatumbo appears to be a casualty of the El Niño weather phenomenon which has disrupted global weather patterns and caused a severe drought in Venezuela. Rain has all but disappeared, drying up rivers and lowering lakes
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

The drought has also extinguished man-made lights across Venezuela because the country relies largely on hydropower. Last month President Hugo Chavez declared an electricity emergency
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

Children play in the waters of Lake Maracaibo at Congo Mirador. Venezuelan authorities have been lobbied to protect the area and the United Nations to recognise it as a world heritage site
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano

A Unesco spokeswoman said there were no plans to do so because electrical storms did not have a “site”
Photograph: Vladimir Marcano