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EXTREME WEATHER
The news media fills its broadcasts with reports of extreme weather phenomena that nowadays
appear to be occurring with greater frequency. The Hottest Day of the Year and Storm of the
Decade are common headlines in newspapers and openers on television. Extreme weather is that
does not coincide with that which is common or normal. It may be weather phenomenon that is
exaggerated or unseasonal. Extreme weather can be extreme heat, cold, wind, rain, drought, snow,
or ice. Extreme weather is often destructive weather. It causes death and billions of dollars in
property damage.
The catastrophic destruction caused by a string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit
the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the most extreme years on record, according to a
new federal analysis. In North America, fourteen weather-climate events in the United States each
caused at least one billion dollars in losses. The death toll from the 2011 tornado season currently
stands at 546, the deadliest year for tornadoes in the U. S. since 1936. This year Texas and Northern
Mexico experienced extreme drought influenced by La Nina. The parched state of Texas and the
northern states of Mexico have suffered under the worst drought since both governments began
recording rainfall 70 years ago. In Texas and northern Mexico, rainfall was fifty-six percent below
normal levels and the temperatures were almost six degrees above normal long-term averages. To
make the situation worse, this region did not benefit from the rainfall from hurricanes or tropical
storms of the last season as they usually do. Millions of livestock have died of heat, dehydration and
starvation. Billions of dollars have been lost to crop destruction caused by inadequate irrigation and
the ubiquitous fires that result from dried up vegetation. While Texas and Mexico suffered
horrendous drought, the southern part of the United States has experienced terrible flooding. In the
spring of this year, massive amounts of water from snow melts and heavy rainfall inundated many
states with floods of historic proportion. Not since 1937 has so much water covered such a
relatively small area of the United States. In the Heartland of the Midwest, Missouri suffered the
most. It experienced hundreds of tornadoes. Some leveled towns and killed hundreds of its
inhabitants.
In 2011, across the world in Africa, where agriculture depends on the rain, severe drought affected
many countries in 2011 among them northern Kenya, western Somalia and some parts of Ethiopia.
Thirteen million people required emergency aid, according to the UN Office for Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Then, starting in October, many of the same areas were
overwhelmed by rains. In eastern Asia rainfall during the 2011 monsoon season was far above
average, with Thailand and Laos most affected. Floods claimed nearly 1,000 lives across Thailand,
Cambodia and Myanmar. Terrible flooding, made worse by high tides, affected many parts of the
the capitol city of Bangkok for several weeks from mid-October, causing economic damage of
several billion dollars. In South America in Brazil rainfall exceeding eight inches in a few hours
caused the death of more than a thousand people. In Central America there was major flooding in
October. Sixty inches of rain fell in El Salvador over 10 days. Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and
Costa Rica also were affected by the rain. In South Asia, Pakistan suffered the wettest monsoon
season on record.
TEXAS and MEXICO
Dried up vegetation
Dry riverbeds
Sources:
I. North Mexico Drought Worst On Record, by Ricardo Chavez , Huffington Post Green,
December 3,
2011.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/north-mexico-drought_n_1126006.html?ref=extre
me-weather.
II. Extreme & Weird Weather of the World - Global extremes
12/02/11
http://coolwx.com/extreme/
III. As Irene Arrives, 2011 Has Already Seen A Long List Of Billion-Dollar U.S. Disasters,
EarthSkyhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/users/earthsky
IV. 2011 Extreme Weather Events, December 4, 2011, The Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8922424/2011-extreme-weather-even
ts.html
V. NOAA Makes It Official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History, by By Lauren
Morello and ClimateWire, June 17, 2011
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=noaa-makes-2011-most-extreme-weather-year.
VI. 2011: A year of extreme weather, and the 10th-hottest, November 29, 2011 Los Angeles
TimesWorld.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/11/2011-a-year-of-extreme-weather-and-th
e-10th-hottest-on-record.ht
VII. April 27-28 Tornado Outbreak Part II: Special Symposium on the Tornado Disasters of 2011,
American Meteorolical Society.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/92Annual/webprogram/Paper201327.html