Severe Weather

By National Geographic

Severe weather events like hurricanes and tornadoes have increased fourfold in the last two decades, shaking the foundations of our existence.Weather-related tragedies have fascinated humans throughout time. For those who lovedThe Perfect StormandKrakatoa,the millions who log onto daily weather forecasting sites and check weather apps, and people who can't get enough front-page headlines of global natural disasters.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, forest fires, blizzards, and thunderstorms: National Geographic explores the deadliest of these disasters throughout history and arms you with ways to protect yourself from chaos and destruction. From the 1906 earthquake that flattened San Francisco and the morbid 1889 flash flood that wiped out the entire town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to the Superstorm of 1993 that blanketed Florida in snow and the more recent East Coast and Gulf Coast ravages of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, the destructive force and human tragedy both fascinates and horrifies. In addition to these gripping stories, NGS provides practical tips for surviving at home and weathering the lethal strength of these events if caught outside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: National Geographic
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781426211805

National Geographic

National Geographic cartographers create award-winning maps using state-of-the-art software for cartography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results are clear, detailed maps that make map reading fun and informative.

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INTRODUCTION

Blasts From the Past

Merciless, inconvenient, dangerous, unforgiving, deadly: Although only a few natural disasters in U.S. history can compare with the Katrina catastrophe or Sandy’s costly damage, those cataclysms are just two in an endless string of global weather-related rampages. History, myth, folklore, and literature are littered with extreme events that have changed the course of history. In an instant, hurricanes, rainstorms, windstorms, lightning strikes, floods, tornadoes, and blizzards can irreversibly alter the shape of our planet and the lives of millions of people. And yet, unlike volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, which can ravage with no warning whatsoever, storms are visible and evolving, emerging from a string of clues that offer the tantalizing promise of predictability—a promise, alas, that across the ages goes unheeded or unrealized, often with catastrophic results.

Wayward weather has forever plagued humankind, from biblical floods to the 17th-century dry spell that fueled London’s Great Fire in 1666—every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, as Samuel Pepys noted. In 1846, wet conditions wiped out all of the potatoes in Ireland, a blight leading to devastating famines that killed thousands. Archaeologists have speculated that a drought from 1276 to 1299 forced the Anasazi Indians of the American Southwest to abandon their homes in search of water.

In 1566, Bishop Diego de Landa documented in vivid detail a deadly storm—perhaps the earliest reported hurricane in the New World—that had wracked Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula generations before his arrival. During a winter’s night, about six o’clock in the evening, there arose a wind which kept increasing and soon changed into a hurricane of four winds. This wind overthrew all the large trees causing a great destruction of every kind of game; and it destroyed also all the tall houses which, since they were covered with straw and contained fire on account of the cold, they burned up a large part of the people.

Wet and dry, fire and rain, gale-force winds and ominous hushes—the ancients frequently interpreted weather as a divine reward or punishment. Egyptian communities appeased Set, the god of storms, to withhold desert storms. The ancient Greeks, ruled by a thunderbolt-wielding Zeus, identified four chief winds called Anemoi and ascribed their power to breezy gods. Boreas, the north wind, sent a cyclone to destroy King Xerxes’ attacking navy in 480 B.C. The word zephyr, or gentle breeze, comes from Zephyrus, the west wind, who was said to have sired the immortal horses of Achilles from Homer’s Iliad. To the Greeks, Notus was the south wind and Eurus was the east wind.

In Greco-Roman myth, Aeolus was the ruler of all