Curated category
Weather hazards
- LightningLightning superheats the surrounding air to about 30,000 degrees Celsius in a near-instantaneous burst, releasing energy on a scale that averages between 200…
- ThunderstormA thunderstorm is one of the few natural forces that can release energy comparable to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
- HailHail killed more than 200 people in the Moradabad district of India on the 30th of April 1888. It is one of the highest hail-related death tolls on record…
- BlizzardA blizzard is not simply a heavy snowfall. It is a specific meteorological event defined by wind, and in the winter of 1880-81, that distinction nearly…
- TornadoA tornado holds a record that has stood for nearly a century: on the 18th of March 1925, a single twister traveled across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana for…
- Tropical cycloneA tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system, and the most intense one ever recorded carried a pressure of 870 hectopascals.
- FloodA flash flood once killed eight people who had gathered on a Sunday afternoon at a popular waterfall in a narrow canyon.
- StormA storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment, and it can rip across worlds far beyond our own. On Jupiter, a single storm called the Great Red…
- DroughtDrought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions, and it has been shaping human history for as long as records exist. It appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
- Extreme weatherExtreme weather killed more than 5,000 people directly during a single American heat wave in 1936. That figure comes from one of the deadliest summers on…