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–1300 BC on Loreline.
last updated 2026-07-16
Eras
- Earthquakes — The ground itself giving way — the great quakes that levelled cities and reshaped coastlines, from Lisbon 1755 to the megathrusts of the modern age.
- Tsunamis — Walls of water thrown across whole oceans by quakes and landslides — the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tōhoku catastrophes and the tsunamis of history.
- Hurricanes & Cyclones — The great tropical cyclones — hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones — that drowned coasts and flattened cities across every warm ocean on Earth.
- Tornadoes — The most violent storms on the planet — the tornadoes and outbreaks that tore across Tornado Alley and beyond.
- Floods — When the water rose — river floods, flash floods, dam failures and monsoon deluges that swallowed whole regions.
- Wildfires — Firestorms out of control — the megafires and firestorms that consumed forests, towns and skies from Australia to California to the Amazon.
- Volcanoes — The Earth's furnace breaking through — the eruptions, from Vesuvius and Krakatoa to Pinatubo and beyond, that buried cities and darkened the sky.
- Landslides & Mudslides — The mountain coming down — landslides, mudflows, lahars and rockfalls that buried valleys and villages in minutes.
- Droughts & Heat — The slow disasters — the great droughts, dust bowls and killer heatwaves that starved land and people across continents.
- Blizzards, Ice & Cold — When the world froze — blizzards, ice storms, cold waves and the great winter storms that paralysed nations.
- Lightning & Freak Storms — The sky at its strangest — killer lightning, supercells, derechos, ball lightning and the freak storms that defied the forecast.
- Hail & Dust Storms — Ice and dust from above — giant hailstorms and the towering dust storms and haboobs that swallowed cities whole.
- Biological Plagues — When nature swarmed — the locust plagues, insect infestations and biological disasters that stripped the land bare.
- Ocean & Coral — The disasters of the sea — mass coral bleaching, red tides, algal blooms and the slow catastrophes unfolding underwater.
- Avalanches — The snow let loose — the avalanches that buried climbers, villages and armies beneath the mountains.
- Sinkholes & Ground Failure — The ground opening up — sinkholes, subsidence and the sudden collapses that swallowed roads, houses and people.
- — 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.
- — The Minoan (Thera) eruption. Around 1600 BC the volcano of Thera (Santorini) erupted catastrophically, devastating Minoan civilisation and possibly inspiring the Atlantis legend.
- — 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.
- — 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.
- — The 115 Antioch earthquake. An earthquake struck Antioch while the Roman emperor Trajan was wintering there, nearly killing him.
- — 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.
- — The 365 AD Crete earthquake & tsunami. A massive quake off Crete sent a tsunami that devastated the eastern Mediterranean, including Alexandria.
- — The Ilopango eruption. A vast eruption in what is now El Salvador around 431 AD may have darkened skies worldwide and disrupted the Maya.
- — The 526 Antioch earthquake. A quake and fire destroyed Antioch in the Byzantine Empire, killing an estimated 250,000.
- — The Plague of Justinian. The first recorded bubonic plague pandemic devastated the Byzantine Empire from 541 AD.
- — The 684 Hakuhō earthquake. Japan's oldest recorded tsunami followed the Hakuhō earthquake in the 7th century.
- — The 856 Damghan earthquake. One of the deadliest earthquakes in history struck Damghan in Persia in 856, killing some 200,000.
- — The 869 Jōgan tsunami. A great tsunami flooded the Sendai plain in 869 — a warning from history ignored before 2011.
- — The 893 Ardabil earthquake. A catastrophic earthquake struck Ardabil in northwestern Persia in 893, one of history's deadliest.
- — The Eldgjá eruption. Iceland's Eldgjá fissure produced the largest lava flood in recorded history around 939, chilling the medieval world.
- — 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.
- — The 1138 Aleppo earthquake. One of the deadliest earthquakes ever, it devastated Aleppo in Syria, killing around 230,000.
- — 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.
- — The Samalas eruption. The largest eruption of the last millennium — Samalas in Indonesia in 1257 — caused a global volcanic winter.
- — The St. Lucia's flood. A storm surge broke the dikes of the Zuiderzee in 1287, drowning tens of thousands in the Low Countries.
- — The 1332 Yellow River flood. A catastrophic Yellow River flood and the famine and plague that followed killed millions in 14th-century China.
- — The 1333 flood of Florence. A great flood of the Arno devastated medieval Florence in 1333, recorded by the chronicler Giovanni Villani.
- — The Black Death. The deadliest pandemic in history, plague carried by fleas killed up to half of Europe from 1347.
- — The 1356 Basel earthquake. The most destructive earthquake in central Europe's recorded history levelled the Swiss city of Basel.
- — The St. Elizabeth's Flood. A storm surge burst the dikes of Holland in 1421, drowning villages and creating a vast inland sea.
- — 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'.
- — The Kuwae eruption. A vast eruption in Vanuatu around 1452 blew the island of Kuwae apart and cooled the globe.
- — The Columbian disease exchange. Old World diseases like smallpox killed a huge share of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492.
- — The St. Felix's Flood, 1530. A storm surge drowned much of the Dutch province of Zeeland on 'Evil Saturday', killing over 100,000.
- — The cocoliztli epidemics. Mysterious 'cocoliztli' epidemics killed millions in 16th-century Mexico, possibly a native salmonella.
- — The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. The deadliest earthquake in recorded history killed an estimated 830,000 in China's Shaanxi province.
- — 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.
- — The floods of the Tiber. For centuries the Tiber flooded Rome each winter, its high-water marks still carved on the city's walls.
- — The Huaynaputina eruption. Peru's Huaynaputina produced South America's largest historic eruption, cooling the globe and triggering famine.
- — The burial of Plurs. A rockslide-avalanche buried the wealthy Swiss-Italian village of Plurs (Piuro) in 1618, killing over 1,000.
- — The 1631 eruption of Vesuvius. The most destructive eruption of Vesuvius since Roman times killed thousands around Naples in 1631.
- — The Burchardi Flood, 1634. A North Sea storm surge tore apart the coast of North Frisia in Germany and Denmark, killing about 15,000.
- — The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. One of the most intense hurricanes to strike New England hit the young Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies.
- — The Great Plague of London. The last great outbreak of bubonic plague in England killed a quarter of London's people in 1665.
- — The 1669 eruption of Mount Etna. Etna's largest historical eruption sent lava into the Sicilian city of Catania.
- — The alpine avalanche disasters. For centuries avalanches have swept away entire alpine hamlets in a single winter night, dreaded as the 'white death'.
- — The 1692 Port Royal earthquake. An earthquake dropped much of the pirate city of Port Royal, Jamaica, into the sea in 1692.
- — The 1703 Genroku tsunami. An earthquake off Japan's Boso peninsula sent a tsunami into Edo-era coastal towns.
- — The 1707 Hōei earthquake. Japan's largest pre-modern earthquake sent a tsunami along the Pacific coast and preceded an eruption of Mount Fuji.
- — The 1737 Calcutta cyclone. A cyclone and storm surge struck the mouth of the Hooghly River near Calcutta, one of history's deadliest.
- — The 1746 Lima–Callao earthquake. An earthquake and tsunami destroyed Lima and its port Callao in 1746, one of Peru's worst disasters.
- — The 1751 Concepción earthquake. A great earthquake and tsunami destroyed Concepción in colonial Chile, forcing the city to move.
- — 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.
- — 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.
- — The Newfoundland hurricane of 1775. A hurricane killed thousands of fishermen off Newfoundland in 1775, one of the deadliest in Canadian history.
- — The Great Hurricane of 1780. The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record killed over 22,000 across the Caribbean during the American Revolution.
- — The 1783 Calabrian earthquakes. A sequence of earthquakes devastated Calabria in southern Italy in 1783, killing tens of thousands.
- — 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.
- — The drought before the Revolution. Drought, hail and a brutal winter wrecked France's harvest in 1788, helping ignite the Revolution the next year.
- — The 1792 Mount Unzen disaster. A volcanic collapse and tsunami at Mount Unzen killed about 15,000 — Japan's deadliest volcanic disaster.
- — The 1797 Riobamba earthquake. One of the most destructive earthquakes in the Andes levelled Riobamba, Ecuador, killing tens of thousands.
- — The Goldau landslide. A mountainside collapsed onto the Swiss village of Goldau in 1806, burying it and its people.
- — The New Madrid earthquakes. A series of massive earthquakes rocked the central U.S. in 1811-12, reportedly making the Mississippi run backwards.
- — The 1812 Caracas earthquake. An earthquake destroyed Caracas during Venezuela's war of independence, killing thousands.
- — 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.
- — The Great September Gale of 1815. A powerful hurricane struck New England in 1815, the worst until 1938.
- — The 1822 Aleppo earthquake. An earthquake devastated the Syrian city of Aleppo again in 1822, centuries after the great 1138 disaster.
- — The 1822 Galunggung eruption. Java's Galunggung erupted with deadly lahars that killed over 4,000.
- — The 1839 Coringa cyclone. A cyclone and storm surge destroyed the Indian port of Coringa, killing some 300,000 and erasing the town.
- — The 1840 Natchez tornado. The second-deadliest tornado in U.S. history struck Natchez, Mississippi, along the river, killing over 300.
- — The Great Irish Famine. A potato blight caused a famine that killed a million and drove a million more to emigrate from Ireland.
- — The Great Havana Hurricane of 1846. A hurricane devastated Havana in 1846, one of the most intense to strike Cuba in the 19th century.
- — The Black Thursday bushfires. The 1851 Black Thursday fires burned a quarter of what is now Victoria, Australia, on a single day.
- — The Broad Street cholera outbreak. John Snow traced a deadly 1854 London cholera outbreak to a single water pump, founding modern epidemiology.
- — The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake. New Zealand's largest recorded earthquake lifted the Wellington coastline in 1855.
- — The 1855 Edo earthquake. An earthquake struck Edo (Tokyo), spawning the famous 'namazu-e' catfish woodblock prints of Japanese folklore.
- — The great wine blight. The phylloxera aphid destroyed most of Europe's vineyards in the 19th century, nearly ending winemaking.
- — The Great Sheffield Flood. The failure of the Dale Dyke Dam sent a wall of water through Sheffield, England, killing about 240.
- — The 1864 Calcutta cyclone. A cyclone drove a huge surge up the Hooghly into Calcutta in 1864, killing tens of thousands.
- — The 1867 Virgin Islands tsunami. An earthquake sent a tsunami through the Virgin Islands and the eastern Caribbean in 1867.
- — The 1868 Arica earthquake and tsunami. A great earthquake off Peru (now Chile) sent a tsunami that carried a US warship inland at Arica.
- — 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.
- — 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.
- — The Great Famine of 1876-78. Drought and colonial policy caused a famine that killed millions across southern India.
- — The 1876-79 Northern Chinese famine. A catastrophic drought caused a famine that killed an estimated 9-13 million across northern China.
- — The 1876 Great Backerganj cyclone. A cyclone drove a huge surge into the Bengal delta, killing around 200,000.
- — The global drought of 1876-78. A vast El Niño drought caused famines that killed tens of millions across India, China and Brazil.
- — The 1877 Cotopaxi eruption. An eruption of Ecuador's Cotopaxi sent lahars racing over 100 km down its valleys in 1877.
- — The 1880 Marshfield tornado. A tornado destroyed Marshfield, Missouri, one of the deadliest of the 19th century.
- — 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.
- — The 1881 Elm rockslide. A rockslide destroyed part of the village of Elm in Switzerland, killing 115.
- — The 1883 Krakatoa tsunami. Krakatoa's eruption generated tsunamis up to 30 metres high that killed over 36,000 around the Sunda Strait.
- — 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.
- — The 1886 Charleston earthquake. A rare, powerful earthquake in the U.S. Southeast devastated Charleston, South Carolina.
- — 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.
- — The 1888 Schoolhouse Blizzard. A sudden blizzard struck the U.S. Great Plains as children left school, killing 235, many of them children.
- — The Great White Hurricane. The Blizzard of 1888 buried the U.S. Northeast in snow days after the Schoolhouse Blizzard hit the Plains.
- — 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.
- — The 1888 Mount Bandai eruption. A sudden collapse of Japan's Mount Bandai buried villages and killed nearly 500 in 1888.
- — The 1889 Johnstown Flood. The South Fork Dam failed above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, sending a 20-metre wall of water that killed 2,209.
- — The Naga and monsoon landslides. Monsoon-soaked hillsides collapse across South and Southeast Asia every year, burying roads and villages.
- — The great rinderpest panzootic. A cattle plague swept Africa in the 1890s, killing most of the continent's cattle and causing mass famine.
- — The 1891 Mino–Owari earthquake. The largest known inland earthquake in Japan tore a visible fault scarp across the countryside.
- — The Great Hinckley Fire. A firestorm destroyed the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, in 1894, killing over 400.
- — 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.
- — 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.
- — The Great Blizzard of 1899. A cold wave and blizzard in February 1899 brought snow to every U.S. state, even Florida.
- — The Great Flood of Paris. The Seine burst its banks in 1910, submerging Paris streets for weeks in the city's worst modern flood.
- — The 1927 Great Mississippi Flood. The most destructive river flood in U.S. history inundated 70,000 square km and displaced 630,000.
- — 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.
- — The Tillamook Burn. A series of huge fires burned Oregon's Tillamook forest repeatedly from 1933, later famously replanted.
- — 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.
- — The 1938 New England hurricane. The 'Long Island Express' struck New England without warning, killing nearly 700.
- — The 1939 Chillán earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Chilean city of Chillán in 1939, one of the country's deadliest.
- — 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.
- — The 1944 San Juan earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Argentine city of San Juan in 1944, a disaster that helped launch Juan Perón.
- — The tsunami that changed Hawaii. The 1946 tsunami's surprise attack on Hilo led to the founding of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System.
- — The Kathleen Typhoon floods. Typhoon Kathleen's floods devastated the Kanto plain around Tokyo in 1947.
- — The 1947 Maine fires. Wildfires swept coastal Maine in the dry autumn of 1947, burning Bar Harbor and much of Acadia.
- — The 1947 New York blizzard. A surprise blizzard dumped record snow on New York City the day after Christmas 1947.
- — The 1951 Polesine flood. The Po River burst its banks in 1951, flooding the Polesine region of northern Italy and displacing 180,000.
- — The Lynmouth flood. A flash flood roared down the East and West Lyn rivers into the Devon village of Lynmouth, killing 34.
- — The 1954 Blons avalanches. Two avalanches struck the Austrian village of Blons on the same day, killing over 100.
- — Hurricane Carol. struck New England hard in 1954, weeks before Hurricane Edna followed.
- — The North African locust invasions. Desert-locust swarms have swept North Africa and the Middle East for millennia, devouring everything green.
- — Hurricane Audrey. 's surge struck southwestern Louisiana with little warning in 1957, killing hundreds.
- — Typhoon Mireille. was one of the costliest to strike Japan in the 20th century, in 1991.
- — Typhoon Vera (Isewan). Japan's deadliest typhoon struck Nagoya with a huge storm surge, killing over 5,000.
- — The 1960 Agadir earthquake. A moderate but shallow quake destroyed the Moroccan city of Agadir, killing a third of its population.
- — The 1960 Pacific tsunami. The Valdivia quake sent tsunamis across the Pacific that killed people in Chile, Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
- — Hurricane Donna. raked the entire U.S. East Coast from Florida to New England in 1960.
- — The 1962 Huascarán avalanche. An ice avalanche from Peru's Huascarán mountain buried the town of Ranrahirca, killing about 4,000.
- — Typhoon Wanda. drove a deadly storm surge into Hong Kong's Tolo Harbour in 1962.
- — 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.
- — Hurricane Flora. stalled over Cuba and Haiti in 1963, its rains killing thousands.
- — The birth of Surtsey. A new island, Surtsey, rose from the sea off Iceland in 1963 in a spectacular undersea eruption.
- — The 1964 Alaska earthquake. The magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake — the strongest in North American history — devastated Anchorage.
- — Hurricane Betsy. 'Billion Dollar Betsy' flooded New Orleans in 1965, a grim rehearsal for Katrina forty years later.
- — The 1965 Taal eruption. A violent eruption of the Philippines' Taal volcano killed hundreds on its lake island.
- — The 1972 Hong Kong landslides. Torrential rain triggered deadly landslides across Hong Kong, including the Kotewall Road collapse.
- — The 1966 Belmond tornado. A tornado destroyed much of the Iowa town of Belmond in 1966.
- — The 1967 Lisbon floods. Flash floods killed hundreds around Lisbon, Portugal, in a single night in 1967, a long-hidden disaster.
- — The 1963 Skopje earthquake. A quake destroyed 80% of Skopje in Yugoslavia (now North Macedonia), killing over 1,000.
- — 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.
- — The 1971 Saint-Jean-Vianney landslide. A quick-clay collapse swallowed 40 homes in the Quebec village of Saint-Jean-Vianney, killing 31.
- — Dutch elm disease. A fungus spread by beetles killed most of the elm trees of Europe and North America in the 20th century.
- — The 1971 Red River flood. The Red River delta flood of 1971 is considered one of the worst of the 20th century in Vietnam.
- — The 1972 Managua earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the centre of Managua, Nicaragua, on Christmas Eve, killing over 10,000.
- — The Heimaey eruption. An eruption on Iceland's Heimaey island in 1973 buried a fishing town, and residents pumped seawater to stop the lava.
- — The Sahel droughts. Decades of drought across Africa's Sahel from the late 1960s brought famine to Ethiopia, Sudan and the Sahara's edge.
- — Hurricane Fifi. 's rains caused catastrophic flooding in Honduras, killing thousands.
- — The 1976 Guatemala earthquake. A quake along the Motagua Fault killed over 23,000 in Guatemala.
- — The Teton Dam failure. Idaho's brand-new Teton Dam collapsed as it filled, filmed as the flood swept downstream.
- — 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.
- — The Blizzard of 1977. A blizzard with hurricane-force winds buried Buffalo, New York, in one of the worst U.S. snow disasters.
- — The 1977 Caucete earthquake. An earthquake struck the San Juan region of Argentina in 1977, causing widespread liquefaction.
- — The Blizzard of 1978. A historic blizzard buried the U.S. Northeast, stranding thousands on highways around Boston.
- — The 1978 Tabas earthquake. An earthquake obliterated the Iranian desert town of Tabas, killing around 15,000.
- — The 1979 Tumaco tsunami. An earthquake off Colombia and Ecuador sent a tsunami into the town of Tumaco in 1979.
- — The 1980 US heat wave. A brutal heat wave and drought killed over 1,700 across the central and southern U.S. in 1980.
- — Hurricane Allen. was one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, raking the Caribbean and Texas in 1980.
- — The 1980 El Asnam earthquake. An earthquake destroyed the Algerian city of El Asnam (Chlef) in 1980, killing thousands.
- — The 1980 Irpinia earthquake. A quake struck the Campania and Basilicata regions of southern Italy, killing nearly 2,500.
- — The Winter Park sinkhole. A huge sinkhole opened in Winter Park, Florida, in 1981, swallowing a house, cars and part of a swimming pool.
- — The Winter Park sinkhole. A huge sinkhole opened in Winter Park, Florida, in 1980, swallowing a house, cars and part of a pool.
- — The Ash Wednesday bushfires. Firestorms swept South Australia and Victoria on Ash Wednesday 1983, killing 75.
- — The 1984 Munich hailstorm. A supercell dropped huge hail on Munich in 1984, one of the costliest hailstorms in European history.
- — 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.
- — The 1986 San Salvador earthquake. An earthquake struck the capital of El Salvador in 1986, killing over 1,500.
- — The Great Storm of 1987. A freak extratropical storm battered southern England in 1987, felling 15 million trees overnight.
- — The 1988 North American drought. A severe drought and heatwave withered the U.S. farm belt in 1988 and fed the Yellowstone fires.
- — The 1988 Yellowstone fires. Fires burned a third of Yellowstone National Park, forcing a rethink of natural fire management.
- — Hurricane Gilbert. One of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record, Gilbert devastated Jamaica and the Yucatán.
- — The 1988 Armenian earthquake. The Spitak earthquake devastated northern Armenia in the Soviet Union, killing at least 25,000.
- — Hurricane Hugo. Hugo devastated the Caribbean and the Carolinas, one of the costliest hurricanes of its era.
- — 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.
- — The Kuwaiti oil fires. Retreating forces set fire to over 600 Kuwaiti oil wells, blackening the sky for months in an environmental catastrophe.
- — The 1991 Andover tornado. An F5 tornado near Andover, Kansas, was one of the first violent tornadoes captured on home video.
- — Cyclone Gay. The 1991 Bay of Bengal cyclone drove a massive surge into Bangladesh, killing around 138,000.
- — The collapse of the cod. Centuries of overfishing crashed the northern cod off Newfoundland in 1992, ending a way of life overnight.
- — Hurricane Andrew. A Category 5 hurricane flattened parts of South Florida, causing $27 billion in damage and rewriting how America builds for storms.
- — The 1992 Cairo earthquake. A moderate but shallow earthquake struck Cairo in 1992, killing over 500 in the crowded city.
- — The 1930 Midi floods. Catastrophic floods struck the Tarn and Garonne valleys of southern France in 1930, killing hundreds.
- — The 1993 Great Flood. Months of flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers submerged much of the American Midwest.
- — The 1993 Latur earthquake. An earthquake struck a quiet, quake-free part of India in 1993, killing nearly 10,000 in their sleep.
…573 further moments continue the chronology here. Full text archive: /loreline-text/natural-disasters.md
- — The Black Friday bushfires. Bushfires burned nearly two million hectares of Victoria, Australia, on 'Black Friday' 1939.
- — The 2023 Marapi eruption. A sudden eruption of Indonesia's Marapi volcano in 2023 killed climbers on its slopes.
- — The White Friday avalanches, 1916. During WWI, avalanches — some triggered deliberately — killed thousands of soldiers in the Italian Alps in a single week.
- — The 1927 Gulang earthquake. A powerful earthquake struck Gansu, China, killing an estimated 40,000.
- — The 2024 Noto earthquake. A magnitude 7.6 quake struck Japan's Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day, triggering a tsunami and fires.
- — The recurring locust threat. Warming and rain keep re-igniting desert-locust breeding, a standing threat to Africa and South Asia.
- — The 2024 Nordic deep freeze. Temperatures plunged below -40°C across Scandinavia in early 2024 in a historic cold snap.
- — The Grindavík eruptions. Eruptions on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula from late 2023 forced the evacuation of the town of Grindavík.
- — The Matheson Fire. A firestorm swept through northern Ontario in 1916, killing over 200 in one of Canada's deadliest fires.
- — The 1974 Super Outbreak. In 18 hours, 148 tornadoes tore across 13 U.S. states, the most violent tornado outbreak ever recorded until 2011.
- — The 2024 Yunnan landslide. A landslide buried a village in China's Yunnan province in the depth of winter in 2024.
- — The 2024 Chile wildfires. Fast-moving fires swept into Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, killing over 130 in Chile's worst fire disaster.
- — The 1972 Iran blizzard. The deadliest blizzard in history buried villages in southern Iran under metres of snow, killing about 4,000.
- — The Smokehouse Creek Fire. The largest wildfire in Texas history burned across the Panhandle in early 2024.
- — The 1954 Yangtze floods. The 1954 Yangtze River floods were among the worst of the century, killing over 30,000 in China.
- — The 1910 Wellington avalanche. An avalanche swept two trains off the tracks near Wellington, Washington, killing 96 — the deadliest in U.S. history.
- — The 2024 global bleaching event. The fourth global mass-bleaching event, declared in 2024, hit reefs across every ocean at once.
- — The 2024 East Africa floods. Heavy rains and flooding devastated Kenya, Tanzania and the region, killing hundreds.
- — The 2024 Hualien earthquake. Taiwan's strongest quake in 25 years struck near Hualien, toppling buildings.
- — The 2024 Dubai floods. A year's rain fell in a day on the UAE, flooding Dubai's malls, roads and airport in a desert deluge.
- — The 2024 Ruang eruption. Indonesia's Ruang volcano erupted explosively in 2024, forcing mass evacuations and closing airports.
- — The 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods. Catastrophic floods submerged Porto Alegre and much of southern Brazil in the state's worst disaster.
- — The 2024 South Asia heatwave. A prolonged, deadly heatwave gripped India and Pakistan, with Delhi hitting record temperatures.
- — The 2024 Mexico heat and water crisis. A brutal heatwave and drought dried reservoirs and killed howler monkeys across Mexico in 2024.
- — The 2024 double cicada emergence. Two periodical cicada broods — one 13-year, one 17-year — emerged together across the U.S. for the first time since 1803, in the trillions.
- — The 2024 tornado super-season. The spring of 2024 brought one of the most active severe-storm seasons on record across the U.S.
- — The 1970 Lubbock tornado. A tornado tore through downtown Lubbock, Texas, reshaping how scientists rate tornado damage.
- — The 1908 Messina tsunami. The great Messina earthquake sent a tsunami up to 12 metres high into the Strait, adding to the catastrophe.
- — The 2024 Kanlaon eruption. The Philippines' Kanlaon volcano erupted explosively in 2024, dusting towns and forcing evacuations.
- — The 1993 Galeras eruption. Colombia's Galeras erupted while scientists stood in its crater, killing nine of them.
- — The Indian famine of 1899-1900. One of the worst famines in Indian history followed the failure of the monsoon in 1899.
- — Hurricane Beryl. The earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record devastated the Windward Islands.
- — The 2024 Sicily and Sardinia drought. Sicily declared a state of emergency as reservoirs ran dry in the 2024 Mediterranean drought.
- — The 1951 Mount Lamington eruption. A pyroclastic eruption of Papua New Guinea's Mount Lamington killed about 3,000 in 1951.
- — Cyclones of the smaller islands. Small island nations from the Caribbean to the Pacific are repeatedly devastated by cyclones far beyond their means to recover.
- — The Jasper wildfire. A wildfire tore into the townsite of Jasper in the Canadian Rockies in 2024, destroying a third of the town.
- — The 2024 Wayanad landslides. Massive landslides buried villages in Wayanad, Kerala, India, in 2024, killing hundreds.
- — The Banqiao Dam failure. A typhoon caused China's Banqiao and other dams to fail in a cascade, killing an estimated 170,000.
- — Typhoon Yagi. 2024's most powerful storm, devastated Vietnam, the Philippines and southern China.
- — The 2024 Maiduguri flood. A dam collapse flooded Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria in 2024, displacing over a million people.
- — The 2024 Portugal wildfires. Wildfires swept northern and central Portugal in September 2024, killing several.
- — Hurricane Helene. Helene's rains caused catastrophic flooding far inland in the Appalachians, devastating western North Carolina.
- — Hurricane Milton. Milton rapidly intensified and struck Florida weeks after Helene, spawning a deadly tornado outbreak.
- — The 2024 Valencia floods. A year's rain fell in hours over eastern Spain, sending flash floods through Valencia that killed over 220 — Spain's deadliest flood in decades.
- — Diverting the lava of Etna. In 1992 engineers used explosives and barriers to divert Mount Etna's lava away from the town of Zafferana.
- — The 'December Giant' sinkhole. One of the largest natural sinkholes in the U.S. suddenly opened in Alabama in 1972.
- — The Catatumbo lightning. Where Venezuela's Catatumbo River meets Lake Maracaibo, lightning storms rage up to 300 nights a year — the most electric place on Earth.
- — Cyclone Chido. devastated the French island of Mayotte, flattening shantytowns in the archipelago's worst disaster in decades.
- — The 1999 Vanuatu tsunami. An earthquake sent a tsunami into Pentecost Island in Vanuatu in 1999, a warning acted on by local knowledge.
- — Cyclone Tracy. destroyed the Australian city of Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, flattening most of its buildings.
- — Lightning and the skyscraper. Tall towers like the Empire State Building are struck by lightning dozens of times a year, filmed in spectacular strikes.
- — The recurring Brazil deluges. Southern and southeastern Brazil now flood catastrophically almost every year as rainfall intensifies.
- — Australia's rabbit plagues. Rabbits, introduced in 1859, bred into a plague that stripped the Australian landscape before myxomatosis was released.
- — The Great Chilean earthquake. The most powerful earthquake ever recorded — magnitude 9.5 — struck Valdivia, Chile, and sent a tsunami across the Pacific.
- — The 2025 Los Angeles fires. Wind-driven fires destroyed thousands of homes across Pacific Palisades and Altadena in a Los Angeles firestorm.
- — The 2025 Los Angeles fires. Hurricane-force winds drove wildfires through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, destroying thousands of homes in one of California's costliest fire disasters.
- — The St. Francis Dam disaster. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam sent a flood down to the sea in California, killing over 400 and ending an engineer's career.
- — The 2025 Gulf Coast snowstorm. A rare, record snowstorm blanketed the U.S. Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida in January 2025.
- — Typhoon Tip. in 1979 remains the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded.
- — The 2025 Arctic outbreaks. Repeated Arctic outbreaks in early 2025 brought record cold and snow deep into the U.S.
- — The 1956 Amorgos tsunami. An earthquake in the Aegean sent a tsunami into the Greek Cyclades islands in 1956.
- — The 1966 flood of Florence. The Arno River flooded Florence, Italy, drowning the city and damaging priceless Renaissance art and books.
- — The 1925 Tri-State Tornado. The deadliest tornado in U.S. history tore 350 km across Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in over three hours, killing 695.
- — The 2025 South Korea wildfires. The worst wildfires in South Korea's history swept Uiseong and Andong, destroying an ancient temple.
- — The 2025 Myanmar earthquake. A powerful magnitude 7.7 quake struck central Myanmar near Mandalay, causing catastrophic damage.
- — The 1953 Waco tornado. A tornado tore through downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 and helping launch modern tornado warnings.
- — The 1941 Huaraz outburst. A glacial lake outburst destroyed a third of Huaraz, Peru, in 1941, killing thousands.
- — The 1976 Friuli earthquake. A quake devastated the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, killing nearly 1,000.
- — The 1996 Tangail tornado. One of the deadliest tornadoes in history struck the Tangail district of Bangladesh, killing around 700.
- — The abandonment of Plymouth. Repeated eruptions of the Soufrière Hills buried Montserrat's capital Plymouth, a modern Pompeii.
- — The 1642 Kaifeng flood. Defenders deliberately breached the Yellow River's dikes to stop an army, drowning the city of Kaifeng.
- — The Antonine Plague. A pandemic, probably smallpox, swept the Roman Empire from 165 AD, killing millions.
- — The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The second-largest eruption of the 20th century, Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled global temperatures by half a degree for two years.
- — The 1911 Taal eruption. A violent eruption of the Philippines' Taal volcano in 1911 killed over 1,300.
- — The 2003 European heatwave. A record heatwave across Europe killed more than 70,000 people, most of them elderly.
- — The 1945 Makran earthquake. A megathrust earthquake off Pakistan's Makran coast triggered a tsunami across the Arabian Sea.
- — The 2025 Mediterranean fires. Extreme heat drove wildfires across Turkey, Greece and the Mediterranean again in 2025.
- — The 2025 European heatwaves. Extreme heat again gripped Europe in the summer of 2025, breaking records and fuelling wildfires.
- — Ball lightning — the freak phenomenon. For centuries, witnesses have reported glowing balls of light drifting through storms — a rare, still-unexplained atmospheric mystery.
- — The El Chichón eruption. A surprise eruption of Mexico's El Chichón killed some 2,000 and injected a cooling haze worldwide.
- — The 1990 Denver hailstorm. A hailstorm battered Denver in 1990, one of the costliest in U.S. history at the time.
- — The 1995 Chicago heatwave. A brutal heatwave killed over 700 people in Chicago in a week, mostly isolated elderly residents.
- — The 1920 Haiyuan landslides. China's Haiyuan earthquake triggered enormous loess landslides that buried villages, killing over 200,000.
- — The 1946 Nankaidō tsunami. A great earthquake off southern Japan sent a tsunami along the coast just after the war.
- — The 1957 Golden Angel earthquake. An earthquake toppled Mexico City's landmark Angel of Independence statue in 1957.
- — The Armero tragedy (Nevado del Ruiz). A small eruption of Nevado del Ruiz melted its glacier, sending a lahar that buried the town of Armero, Colombia, killing 23,000.
- — The 1946 Aleutian tsunami at Scotch Cap. The tsunami that destroyed Hawaii in 1946 first swept away the Scotch Cap lighthouse in Alaska.
- — Hurricane Iniki. devastated the Hawaiian island of Kauai, the strongest to hit Hawaii in recorded history.
- — Hurricane Floyd. caused catastrophic flooding across the U.S. East Coast and one of its largest evacuations.
- — The 1994 Rabaul eruption. Twin eruptions buried much of the town of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea in 1994.
- — The İzmit tsunami. The 1999 İzmit earthquake in Turkey generated a local tsunami in the Sea of Marmara.
- — Himalayan avalanches. Avalanches regularly sweep the high Himalayan valleys, burying villages, roads and mountaineers under snow and ice.
- — The Wichita Falls tornado. 'Terrible Tuesday' — a huge tornado tore through Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1979.
- — Hurricane David. devastated the Dominican Republic and Dominica before striking the U.S. in 1979.
- — The North Korean famine. Floods, drought and policy caused a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in North Korea in the 1990s.
- — The Woodward tornado. One of the deadliest tornadoes in Oklahoma history destroyed much of Woodward in 1947.
- — The Guin tornado. One of the Super Outbreak's most violent tornadoes obliterated the town of Guin, Alabama, in 1974.
- — The 1930 Merapi eruption. An eruption of Java's Merapi volcano in 1930 sent pyroclastic flows that killed some 1,300.
- — The 1998 Papua New Guinea tsunami. A submarine landslide sent a tsunami into Papua New Guinea's coast, killing over 2,000.
- — The 1960 Valdivia earthquake. The most powerful earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, struck southern Chile and sent tsunamis across the Pacific.
- — The Agrigento landslide. A slow ground collapse in Agrigento, Sicily, wrecked a whole modern neighbourhood built on unstable clay in 1966.
- — The 2000 Mozambique floods. Cyclone-driven floods submerged much of Mozambique; a woman famously gave birth in a tree awaiting rescue.
- — The 1987 Black Dragon Fire. One of the largest wildfires of the 20th century burned across China and the Soviet Union in 1987.
- — The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake. A quake levelled Ashgabat in Soviet Turkmenistan, killing an estimated 110,000.
- — The 1962 Val Parghera avalanche. Avalanches repeatedly threaten the road and rail links through the Swiss and Austrian Alps.
- — The 1956 cold wave in Europe. A brutal February cold wave froze rivers and killed thousands across Europe in 1956.
- — The Great Lakes Storm of 1913. A blizzard and hurricane-force winds sank a dozen ships on the Great Lakes in 1913, killing over 250 sailors.
- — The 1938 Yellow River flood. Chinese forces deliberately breached the Yellow River dikes to slow the Japanese advance, killing up to 800,000.
- — The 1999 Vargas tragedy. Torrential rain triggered flash floods and debris flows down the mountains onto Venezuela's coast, killing an estimated 10,000-30,000.
- — The 1957 Valencia flood. The Turia river flooded Valencia, Spain, in 1957, leading the city to divert the river around itself.
- — The 1935 Quetta earthquake. An earthquake destroyed Quetta in British India (now Pakistan), killing tens of thousands.
- — The 1953 Flint–Beecher tornado. The last single U.S. tornado to kill over 100 people struck Flint, Michigan.
- — The 1976 Moro Gulf earthquake. An earthquake and tsunami struck the Moro Gulf in the southern Philippines in 1976, killing thousands.
- — Black Sunday, 1935. On 'Black Sunday' a colossal wall of dust rolled across the American Plains, the worst black blizzard of the Dust Bowl.
- — The 1970 Huascarán avalanche. A quake shook loose a massive rock-and-ice avalanche from Peru's Mount Huascarán that buried the town of Yungay, killing over 20,000.
- — The Great Kantō firestorm. The 1923 quake's true horror was fire — firestorms and a fire tornado in Tokyo killed tens of thousands in minutes.
- — The 1932 Cuba hurricane. The deadliest hurricane in Cuban history drove a huge surge into Santa Cruz del Sur in 1932.
- — The 1993 Hokkaido earthquake. The Hokkaido earthquake and its tsunami devastated the island of Okushiri in Japan in 1993.
- — Hail as a weapon of ruin. Giant hail has smashed crops and killed people for centuries; deadly hailstorms still strike China and India.
- — The 1998 Bangladesh floods. Monsoon floods submerged two-thirds of Bangladesh for months, displacing 30 million people.
Full text archive: /loreline-text/natural-disasters.md
