Natural Disasters

A global archive of the Earth at its most violent — every kind of natural disaster and freak-weather event, from ancient eruptions to last week's storms. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, volcanoes, landslides, droughts, blizzards, freak lightning, dust storms, locust plagues, coral bleaching and more, documented from all over the world in real footage and photographs, in true chronological order.

A chronological documentary of 873 moments spanning 6100 BC–2026 on Loreline.

last updated 2026-07-16

1. 6100 BC — The Storegga Slide tsunami. Around 6100 BC a colossal submarine landslide off Norway sent a tsunami across the North Sea, drowning the land bridge of Doggerland.
2. 1600 BC — The Minoan (Thera) eruption. Around 1600 BC the volcano of Thera (Santorini) erupted catastrophically, devastating Minoan civilisation and possibly inspiring the Atlantis legend.
3. 1300 BC — The locust plagues of antiquity. Locust plagues have haunted humanity for millennia, recorded in the Bible's Book of Exodus and in ancient Egyptian carvings.
4. 0079-08-24 — The eruption of Vesuvius, 79 AD. Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pyroclastic flow, freezing a Roman city in time for two thousand years.
5. 0115-12-13 — The 115 Antioch earthquake. An earthquake struck Antioch while the Roman emperor Trajan was wintering there, nearly killing him.
6. 0232-01-01 — The Hatepe eruption of Taupō. New Zealand's Lake Taupō produced one of the most violent eruptions of the last 5,000 years around 232 AD.
7. 0365-07-21 — The 365 AD Crete earthquake & tsunami. A massive quake off Crete sent a tsunami that devastated the eastern Mediterranean, including Alexandria.
8. 0431-01-01 — The Ilopango eruption. A vast eruption in what is now El Salvador around 431 AD may have darkened skies worldwide and disrupted the Maya.
9. 0526-05-20 — The 526 Antioch earthquake. A quake and fire destroyed Antioch in the Byzantine Empire, killing an estimated 250,000.
10. 0541-01-01 — The Plague of Justinian. The first recorded bubonic plague pandemic devastated the Byzantine Empire from 541 AD.
11. 0684-11-29 — The 684 Hakuhō earthquake. Japan's oldest recorded tsunami followed the Hakuhō earthquake in the 7th century.
12. 0856-12-22 — The 856 Damghan earthquake. One of the deadliest earthquakes in history struck Damghan in Persia in 856, killing some 200,000.
13. 0869-07-09 — The 869 Jōgan tsunami. A great tsunami flooded the Sendai plain in 869 — a warning from history ignored before 2011.
14. 0893-03-23 — The 893 Ardabil earthquake. A catastrophic earthquake struck Ardabil in northwestern Persia in 893, one of history's deadliest.
15. 0939-01-01 — The Eldgjá eruption. Iceland's Eldgjá fissure produced the largest lava flood in recorded history around 939, chilling the medieval world.
16. 0946-01-01 — The Millennium eruption of Paektu. One of the largest eruptions of the last two thousand years blew apart Changbaishan / Paektu on the China-Korea border around 946.
17. 1138-10-11 — The 1138 Aleppo earthquake. One of the deadliest earthquakes ever, it devastated Aleppo in Syria, killing around 230,000.
18. 1200-01-01 — The medieval Egyptian famine. A failure of the Nile flood around 1200 caused a famine so severe that chroniclers recorded scenes of horror in Cairo.
19. 1257-01-01 — The Samalas eruption. The largest eruption of the last millennium — Samalas in Indonesia in 1257 — caused a global volcanic winter.
20. 1287-12-14 — The St. Lucia's flood. A storm surge broke the dikes of the Zuiderzee in 1287, drowning tens of thousands in the Low Countries.
21. 1332-01-01 — The 1332 Yellow River flood. A catastrophic Yellow River flood and the famine and plague that followed killed millions in 14th-century China.
22. 1333-11-04 — The 1333 flood of Florence. A great flood of the Arno devastated medieval Florence in 1333, recorded by the chronicler Giovanni Villani.
23. 1347-01-01 — The Black Death. The deadliest pandemic in history, plague carried by fleas killed up to half of Europe from 1347.
24. 1356-10-18 — The 1356 Basel earthquake. The most destructive earthquake in central Europe's recorded history levelled the Swiss city of Basel.
25. 1421-11-18 — The St. Elizabeth's Flood. A storm surge burst the dikes of Holland in 1421, drowning villages and creating a vast inland sea.
26. 1450-01-01 — The Aztec famine of One Rabbit. A years-long drought caused a famine in the Aztec empire around 1450 so severe it entered legend as 'One Rabbit'.
27. 1452-01-01 — The Kuwae eruption. A vast eruption in Vanuatu around 1452 blew the island of Kuwae apart and cooled the globe.
28. 1520-01-01 — The Columbian disease exchange. Old World diseases like smallpox killed a huge share of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492.
29. 1530-11-05 — The St. Felix's Flood, 1530. A storm surge drowned much of the Dutch province of Zeeland on 'Evil Saturday', killing over 100,000.
30. 1545-01-01 — The cocoliztli epidemics. Mysterious 'cocoliztli' epidemics killed millions in 16th-century Mexico, possibly a native salmonella.
31. 1556-01-23 — The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. The deadliest earthquake in recorded history killed an estimated 830,000 in China's Shaanxi province.
32. 1556-01-23 — The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. The deadliest earthquake in history killed an estimated 830,000 people in Shaanxi, China, where many lived in soft-loess cave dwellings.
33. 1598-12-24 — The floods of the Tiber. For centuries the Tiber flooded Rome each winter, its high-water marks still carved on the city's walls.
34. 1600-02-19 — The Huaynaputina eruption. Peru's Huaynaputina produced South America's largest historic eruption, cooling the globe and triggering famine.
35. 1618-09-04 — The burial of Plurs. A rockslide-avalanche buried the wealthy Swiss-Italian village of Plurs (Piuro) in 1618, killing over 1,000.
36. 1631-12-16 — The 1631 eruption of Vesuvius. The most destructive eruption of Vesuvius since Roman times killed thousands around Naples in 1631.
37. 1634-10-11 — The Burchardi Flood, 1634. A North Sea storm surge tore apart the coast of North Frisia in Germany and Denmark, killing about 15,000.
38. 1635-08-25 — The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. One of the most intense hurricanes to strike New England hit the young Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies.
39. 1665-01-01 — The Great Plague of London. The last great outbreak of bubonic plague in England killed a quarter of London's people in 1665.
40. 1669-03-11 — The 1669 eruption of Mount Etna. Etna's largest historical eruption sent lava into the Sicilian city of Catania.
41. 1689-01-01 — The alpine avalanche disasters. For centuries avalanches have swept away entire alpine hamlets in a single winter night, dreaded as the 'white death'.
42. 1692-06-07 — The 1692 Port Royal earthquake. An earthquake dropped much of the pirate city of Port Royal, Jamaica, into the sea in 1692.
43. 1703-12-31 — The 1703 Genroku tsunami. An earthquake off Japan's Boso peninsula sent a tsunami into Edo-era coastal towns.
44. 1707-10-28 — The 1707 Hōei earthquake. Japan's largest pre-modern earthquake sent a tsunami along the Pacific coast and preceded an eruption of Mount Fuji.
45. 1737-10-07 — The 1737 Calcutta cyclone. A cyclone and storm surge struck the mouth of the Hooghly River near Calcutta, one of history's deadliest.
46. 1746-10-28 — The 1746 Lima–Callao earthquake. An earthquake and tsunami destroyed Lima and its port Callao in 1746, one of Peru's worst disasters.
47. 1751-05-25 — The 1751 Concepción earthquake. A great earthquake and tsunami destroyed Concepción in colonial Chile, forcing the city to move.
48. 1755-11-01 — The 1755 Lisbon earthquake. On All Saints' Day 1755 a magnitude ~8.5 quake, fire and tsunami destroyed Lisbon and killed tens of thousands — a catastrophe that shook Enlightenment Europe's faith itself.
49. 1769-08-18 — The Brescia lightning disaster. Lightning struck a church vault storing gunpowder in Brescia, Italy, in 1769, and the explosion destroyed a sixth of the city.
50. 1775-09-09 — The Newfoundland hurricane of 1775. A hurricane killed thousands of fishermen off Newfoundland in 1775, one of the deadliest in Canadian history.
51. 1780-10-10 — The Great Hurricane of 1780. The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record killed over 22,000 across the Caribbean during the American Revolution.
52. 1783-02-05 — The 1783 Calabrian earthquakes. A sequence of earthquakes devastated Calabria in southern Italy in 1783, killing tens of thousands.
53. 1783-06-08 — The 1783 Laki eruption. Iceland's Laki fissure erupted for months, poisoning livestock and crops and causing a famine that killed a fifth of Iceland's people.
54. 1788-01-01 — The drought before the Revolution. Drought, hail and a brutal winter wrecked France's harvest in 1788, helping ignite the Revolution the next year.
55. 1792-05-21 — The 1792 Mount Unzen disaster. A volcanic collapse and tsunami at Mount Unzen killed about 15,000 — Japan's deadliest volcanic disaster.
56. 1797-02-04 — The 1797 Riobamba earthquake. One of the most destructive earthquakes in the Andes levelled Riobamba, Ecuador, killing tens of thousands.
57. 1806-09-02 — The Goldau landslide. A mountainside collapsed onto the Swiss village of Goldau in 1806, burying it and its people.
58. 1811-12-16 — The New Madrid earthquakes. A series of massive earthquakes rocked the central U.S. in 1811-12, reportedly making the Mississippi run backwards.
59. 1812-03-26 — The 1812 Caracas earthquake. An earthquake destroyed Caracas during Venezuela's war of independence, killing thousands.
60. 1815-04-10 — The 1815 eruption of Tambora. The most powerful eruption in recorded history threw so much ash into the sky it caused 1816's 'Year Without a Summer' worldwide.
61. 1815-09-23 — The Great September Gale of 1815. A powerful hurricane struck New England in 1815, the worst until 1938.
62. 1822-08-13 — The 1822 Aleppo earthquake. An earthquake devastated the Syrian city of Aleppo again in 1822, centuries after the great 1138 disaster.
63. 1822-10-08 — The 1822 Galunggung eruption. Java's Galunggung erupted with deadly lahars that killed over 4,000.
64. 1839-11-25 — The 1839 Coringa cyclone. A cyclone and storm surge destroyed the Indian port of Coringa, killing some 300,000 and erasing the town.
65. 1840-05-07 — The 1840 Natchez tornado. The second-deadliest tornado in U.S. history struck Natchez, Mississippi, along the river, killing over 300.
66. 1845-01-01 — The Great Irish Famine. A potato blight caused a famine that killed a million and drove a million more to emigrate from Ireland.
67. 1846-10-11 — The Great Havana Hurricane of 1846. A hurricane devastated Havana in 1846, one of the most intense to strike Cuba in the 19th century.
68. 1851-02-06 — The Black Thursday bushfires. The 1851 Black Thursday fires burned a quarter of what is now Victoria, Australia, on a single day.
69. 1854-01-01 — The Broad Street cholera outbreak. John Snow traced a deadly 1854 London cholera outbreak to a single water pump, founding modern epidemiology.
70. 1855-01-23 — The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake. New Zealand's largest recorded earthquake lifted the Wellington coastline in 1855.
71. 1855-11-11 — The 1855 Edo earthquake. An earthquake struck Edo (Tokyo), spawning the famous 'namazu-e' catfish woodblock prints of Japanese folklore.
72. 1863-01-01 — The great wine blight. The phylloxera aphid destroyed most of Europe's vineyards in the 19th century, nearly ending winemaking.
73. 1864-03-11 — The Great Sheffield Flood. The failure of the Dale Dyke Dam sent a wall of water through Sheffield, England, killing about 240.
74. 1864-10-05 — The 1864 Calcutta cyclone. A cyclone drove a huge surge up the Hooghly into Calcutta in 1864, killing tens of thousands.
75. 1867-11-18 — The 1867 Virgin Islands tsunami. An earthquake sent a tsunami through the Virgin Islands and the eastern Caribbean in 1867.
76. 1868-08-13 — The 1868 Arica earthquake and tsunami. A great earthquake off Peru (now Chile) sent a tsunami that carried a US warship inland at Arica.
77. 1871-10-08 — The 1871 Peshtigo Fire. The deadliest wildfire in recorded history swept through Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing up to 2,500 on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire.
78. 1875-01-01 — The Rocky Mountain locust swarm. In 1875 the largest recorded locust swarm — trillions of Rocky Mountain locusts — darkened the skies of the American West before the species went extinct.
79. 1876-01-01 — The Great Famine of 1876-78. Drought and colonial policy caused a famine that killed millions across southern India.
80. 1876-01-01 — The 1876-79 Northern Chinese famine. A catastrophic drought caused a famine that killed an estimated 9-13 million across northern China.
81. 1876-10-31 — The 1876 Great Backerganj cyclone. A cyclone drove a huge surge into the Bengal delta, killing around 200,000.
82. 1877-01-01 — The global drought of 1876-78. A vast El Niño drought caused famines that killed tens of millions across India, China and Brazil.
83. 1877-06-26 — The 1877 Cotopaxi eruption. An eruption of Ecuador's Cotopaxi sent lahars racing over 100 km down its valleys in 1877.
84. 1880-04-18 — The 1880 Marshfield tornado. A tornado destroyed Marshfield, Missouri, one of the deadliest of the 19th century.
85. 1881-09-05 — The Thumb Fire of 1881. A firestorm swept Michigan's Thumb region in 1881, the first disaster to which the new American Red Cross responded.
86. 1881-09-11 — The 1881 Elm rockslide. A rockslide destroyed part of the village of Elm in Switzerland, killing 115.
87. 1883-08-27 — The 1883 Krakatoa tsunami. Krakatoa's eruption generated tsunamis up to 30 metres high that killed over 36,000 around the Sunda Strait.
88. 1883-08-27 — The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Krakatoa exploded with a sound heard 4,800 km away, generating tsunamis that killed over 36,000 and cooling the whole planet.
89. 1886-08-31 — The 1886 Charleston earthquake. A rare, powerful earthquake in the U.S. Southeast devastated Charleston, South Carolina.
90. 1887-09-01 — The 1887 Yellow River flood. The Yellow River burst its banks in Henan, China, one of the deadliest floods ever, killing up to 2 million.
91. 1888-01-12 — The 1888 Schoolhouse Blizzard. A sudden blizzard struck the U.S. Great Plains as children left school, killing 235, many of them children.
92. 1888-03-11 — The Great White Hurricane. The Blizzard of 1888 buried the U.S. Northeast in snow days after the Schoolhouse Blizzard hit the Plains.
93. 1888-03-11 — The Great Blizzard of 1888. A blizzard buried the U.S. Northeast under up to 1.3 metres of snow, killing over 400 and stranding New York.
94. 1888-07-15 — The 1888 Mount Bandai eruption. A sudden collapse of Japan's Mount Bandai buried villages and killed nearly 500 in 1888.
95. 1889-05-31 — The 1889 Johnstown Flood. The South Fork Dam failed above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, sending a 20-metre wall of water that killed 2,209.
96. 1889-07-01 — The Naga and monsoon landslides. Monsoon-soaked hillsides collapse across South and Southeast Asia every year, burying roads and villages.
97. 1890-01-01 — The great rinderpest panzootic. A cattle plague swept Africa in the 1890s, killing most of the continent's cattle and causing mass famine.
98. 1891-10-28 — The 1891 Mino–Owari earthquake. The largest known inland earthquake in Japan tore a visible fault scarp across the countryside.
99. 1894-09-01 — The Great Hinckley Fire. A firestorm destroyed the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, in 1894, killing over 400.
100. 1896-05-27 — The 1896 St. Louis tornado. A tornado tore through St. Louis and East St. Louis, one of the deadliest and costliest in U.S. history.
101. 1896-06-15 — The 1896 Meiji Sanriku tsunami. A tsunami struck Japan's Sanriku coast during a festival, killing over 22,000 — the modern origin of the word 'tsunami' worldwide.
102. 1899-02-11 — The Great Blizzard of 1899. A cold wave and blizzard in February 1899 brought snow to every U.S. state, even Florida.
103. 1910-01-28 — The Great Flood of Paris. The Seine burst its banks in 1910, submerging Paris streets for weeks in the city's worst modern flood.
104. 1927-04-15 — The 1927 Great Mississippi Flood. The most destructive river flood in U.S. history inundated 70,000 square km and displaced 630,000.
105. 1928-11-02 — The 1928 Etna eruption. An eruption of Mount Etna destroyed the town of Mascali in 1928, the only town lost to Etna in modern times.
106. 1933-08-14 — The Tillamook Burn. A series of huge fires burned Oregon's Tillamook forest repeatedly from 1933, later famously replanted.
107. 1934-05-01 — The Dust Bowl. Years of drought and poor farming turned the American Great Plains to dust in the 1930s, driving hundreds of thousands from their land.
108. 1938-09-21 — The 1938 New England hurricane. The 'Long Island Express' struck New England without warning, killing nearly 700.

…693 further moments continue the chronology here. Full text archive: /loreline-text/natural-disasters.md

802. 1939-01-24 — The 1939 Chillán earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Chilean city of Chillán in 1939, one of the country's deadliest.
803. 1943-02-20 — The birth of Parícutin. A volcano burst out of a Mexican cornfield in 1943 and grew before farmers' eyes, one of the great geological events of the century.
804. 1944-01-15 — The 1944 San Juan earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Argentine city of San Juan in 1944, a disaster that helped launch Juan Perón.
805. 1946-04-01 — The tsunami that changed Hawaii. The 1946 tsunami's surprise attack on Hilo led to the founding of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System.
806. 1947-09-15 — The Kathleen Typhoon floods. Typhoon Kathleen's floods devastated the Kanto plain around Tokyo in 1947.
807. 1947-10-17 — The 1947 Maine fires. Wildfires swept coastal Maine in the dry autumn of 1947, burning Bar Harbor and much of Acadia.
808. 1947-12-26 — The 1947 New York blizzard. A surprise blizzard dumped record snow on New York City the day after Christmas 1947.
809. 1951-11-14 — The 1951 Polesine flood. The Po River burst its banks in 1951, flooding the Polesine region of northern Italy and displacing 180,000.
810. 1952-08-15 — The Lynmouth flood. A flash flood roared down the East and West Lyn rivers into the Devon village of Lynmouth, killing 34.
811. 1954-01-11 — The 1954 Blons avalanches. Two avalanches struck the Austrian village of Blons on the same day, killing over 100.
812. 1954-08-31 — Hurricane Carol. struck New England hard in 1954, weeks before Hurricane Edna followed.
813. 1955 — The North African locust invasions. Desert-locust swarms have swept North Africa and the Middle East for millennia, devouring everything green.
814. 1957-06-27 — Hurricane Audrey. 's surge struck southwestern Louisiana with little warning in 1957, killing hundreds.
815. 1959 — Typhoon Mireille. was one of the costliest to strike Japan in the 20th century, in 1991.
816. 1959-09-26 — Typhoon Vera (Isewan). Japan's deadliest typhoon struck Nagoya with a huge storm surge, killing over 5,000.
817. 1960-02-29 — The 1960 Agadir earthquake. A moderate but shallow quake destroyed the Moroccan city of Agadir, killing a third of its population.
818. 1960-05-22 — The 1960 Pacific tsunami. The Valdivia quake sent tsunamis across the Pacific that killed people in Chile, Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
819. 1960-09-09 — Hurricane Donna. raked the entire U.S. East Coast from Florida to New England in 1960.
820. 1962-01-10 — The 1962 Huascarán avalanche. An ice avalanche from Peru's Huascarán mountain buried the town of Ranrahirca, killing about 4,000.
821. 1962-09-01 — Typhoon Wanda. drove a deadly storm surge into Hong Kong's Tolo Harbour in 1962.
822. 1963-01-01 — The Big Freeze of 1962-63. The coldest winter in Britain in over 200 years froze the sea and buried the country in snow for months.
823. 1963-10-04 — Hurricane Flora. stalled over Cuba and Haiti in 1963, its rains killing thousands.
824. 1963-11-14 — The birth of Surtsey. A new island, Surtsey, rose from the sea off Iceland in 1963 in a spectacular undersea eruption.
825. 1964-03-27 — The 1964 Alaska earthquake. The magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake — the strongest in North American history — devastated Anchorage.
826. 1965-09-08 — Hurricane Betsy. 'Billion Dollar Betsy' flooded New Orleans in 1965, a grim rehearsal for Katrina forty years later.
827. 1965-09-28 — The 1965 Taal eruption. A violent eruption of the Philippines' Taal volcano killed hundreds on its lake island.
828. 1966 — The 1972 Hong Kong landslides. Torrential rain triggered deadly landslides across Hong Kong, including the Kotewall Road collapse.
829. 1966-10-14 — The 1966 Belmond tornado. A tornado destroyed much of the Iowa town of Belmond in 1966.
830. 1967-11-25 — The 1967 Lisbon floods. Flash floods killed hundreds around Lisbon, Portugal, in a single night in 1967, a long-hidden disaster.
831. 1968 — The 1963 Skopje earthquake. A quake destroyed 80% of Skopje in Yugoslavia (now North Macedonia), killing over 1,000.
832. 1970-11-12 — The 1970 Bhola cyclone. A cyclone struck the Ganges Delta of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 300,000-500,000 — the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded.
833. 1971-05-04 — The 1971 Saint-Jean-Vianney landslide. A quick-clay collapse swallowed 40 homes in the Quebec village of Saint-Jean-Vianney, killing 31.
834. 1971 — Dutch elm disease. A fungus spread by beetles killed most of the elm trees of Europe and North America in the 20th century.
835. 1971-08-01 — The 1971 Red River flood. The Red River delta flood of 1971 is considered one of the worst of the 20th century in Vietnam.
836. 1972-12-23 — The 1972 Managua earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the centre of Managua, Nicaragua, on Christmas Eve, killing over 10,000.
837. 1973-01-23 — The Heimaey eruption. An eruption on Iceland's Heimaey island in 1973 buried a fishing town, and residents pumped seawater to stop the lava.
838. 1973 — The Sahel droughts. Decades of drought across Africa's Sahel from the late 1960s brought famine to Ethiopia, Sudan and the Sahara's edge.
839. 1974-09-18 — Hurricane Fifi. 's rains caused catastrophic flooding in Honduras, killing thousands.
840. 1976-02-04 — The 1976 Guatemala earthquake. A quake along the Motagua Fault killed over 23,000 in Guatemala.
841. 1976-06-05 — The Teton Dam failure. Idaho's brand-new Teton Dam collapsed as it filled, filmed as the flood swept downstream.
842. 1976-07-28 — The 1976 Tangshan earthquake. A magnitude 7.6 quake struck the sleeping Chinese city of Tangshan, killing at least 242,000 people — one of the deadliest earthquakes in recorded history.
843. 1977-01-28 — The Blizzard of 1977. A blizzard with hurricane-force winds buried Buffalo, New York, in one of the worst U.S. snow disasters.
844. 1977-11-23 — The 1977 Caucete earthquake. An earthquake struck the San Juan region of Argentina in 1977, causing widespread liquefaction.
845. 1978-02-05 — The Blizzard of 1978. A historic blizzard buried the U.S. Northeast, stranding thousands on highways around Boston.
846. 1978-09-16 — The 1978 Tabas earthquake. An earthquake obliterated the Iranian desert town of Tabas, killing around 15,000.
847. 1979-12-12 — The 1979 Tumaco tsunami. An earthquake off Colombia and Ecuador sent a tsunami into the town of Tumaco in 1979.
848. 1980-06-01 — The 1980 US heat wave. A brutal heat wave and drought killed over 1,700 across the central and southern U.S. in 1980.
849. 1980-08-07 — Hurricane Allen. was one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, raking the Caribbean and Texas in 1980.
850. 1980-10-10 — The 1980 El Asnam earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Algerian city of El Asnam (Chlef) in 1980, killing thousands.
851. 1980-11-23 — The 1980 Irpinia earthquake. A quake struck the Campania and Basilicata regions of southern Italy, killing nearly 2,500.
852. 1981-05-08 — The Winter Park sinkhole. A huge sinkhole opened in Winter Park, Florida, in 1981, swallowing a house, cars and part of a swimming pool.
853. 1981 — The Winter Park sinkhole. A huge sinkhole opened in Winter Park, Florida, in 1980, swallowing a house, cars and part of a pool.
854. 1983-02-16 — The Ash Wednesday bushfires. Firestorms swept South Australia and Victoria on Ash Wednesday 1983, killing 75.
855. 1984-07-12 — The 1984 Munich hailstorm. A supercell dropped huge hail on Munich in 1984, one of the costliest hailstorms in European history.
856. 1985-09-19 — The 1985 Mexico City earthquake. An 8.0 quake off the Pacific coast devastated Mexico City hundreds of kilometres away, collapsing buildings and killing around 10,000.
857. 1986-10-10 — The 1986 San Salvador earthquake. An earthquake struck the capital of El Salvador in 1986, killing over 1,500.
858. 1987-10-16 — The Great Storm of 1987. A freak extratropical storm battered southern England in 1987, felling 15 million trees overnight.
859. 1988-06-01 — The 1988 North American drought. A severe drought and heatwave withered the U.S. farm belt in 1988 and fed the Yellowstone fires.
860. 1988-06-01 — The 1988 Yellowstone fires. Fires burned a third of Yellowstone National Park, forcing a rethink of natural fire management.
861. 1988-09-14 — Hurricane Gilbert. One of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record, Gilbert devastated Jamaica and the Yucatán.
862. 1988-12-07 — The 1988 Armenian earthquake. The Spitak earthquake devastated northern Armenia in the Soviet Union, killing at least 25,000.
863. 1989-09-21 — Hurricane Hugo. Hugo devastated the Caribbean and the Carolinas, one of the costliest hurricanes of its era.
864. 1989-10-17 — The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A quake struck the San Francisco Bay Area during a live World Series broadcast, collapsing a freeway and killing 63.
865. 1991-02-01 — The Kuwaiti oil fires. Retreating forces set fire to over 600 Kuwaiti oil wells, blackening the sky for months in an environmental catastrophe.
866. 1991-04-26 — The 1991 Andover tornado. An F5 tornado near Andover, Kansas, was one of the first violent tornadoes captured on home video.
867. 1991-11-02 — Cyclone Gay. The 1991 Bay of Bengal cyclone drove a massive surge into Bangladesh, killing around 138,000.
868. 1992-07-02 — The collapse of the cod. Centuries of overfishing crashed the northern cod off Newfoundland in 1992, ending a way of life overnight.
869. 1992-08-24 — Hurricane Andrew. A Category 5 hurricane flattened parts of South Florida, causing $27 billion in damage and rewriting how America builds for storms.
870. 1992-10-12 — The 1992 Cairo earthquake. A moderate but shallow earthquake struck Cairo in 1992, killing over 500 in the crowded city.
871. 1993 — The 1930 Midi floods. Catastrophic floods struck the Tarn and Garonne valleys of southern France in 1930, killing hundreds.
872. 1993-07-01 — The 1993 Great Flood. Months of flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers submerged much of the American Midwest.
873. 1993-09-30 — The 1993 Latur earthquake. An earthquake struck a quiet, quake-free part of India in 1993, killing nearly 10,000 in their sleep.

Full text archive: /loreline-text/natural-disasters.md