The 2005 hurricane season quickly becomes the most intense ever when two of the strongest hurricanes of all time, Katrina and Rita, make landfall in the Caribbean and southeast United States.
Only the strongest 1% of tornadoes are rated EF5. With 322 km/h winds, they cause the total destruction of buildings and throw cars kilometers away. Storm chasers track EF5s in Moore, Oklahoma and Joplin, Missouri.
The Northeast corner of the US is home to snowy winters, but until 1993 it had never seen a winter storm this violent. Called the Storm of the Century, the fast moving cyclone drops snow as far south as Florida, and hurricane force wind.
In 1991 and 2010, volcanoes in the Philippines and Indonesia come alive. The sunny weather turns gray as clouds of hot ash blanket the sky, grounding flights, wrecking farms, and causing evacuations.
When a region's rainy season forgets to show, the effects can be devastating. In 2009 and 2015 Australia and India are boiled alive by catastrophic heat waves.
Though the 2016 Typhoon season has a slow start, Eastern Asia is slammed with some of the strongest Typhoons in recorded history. Typhoons Nepartak and Meranti are rated Category 5 Super Typhoons and bring with them incredible devastation.
Drought, heat, and high winds make for deadly combinations when in 2007 and 2011, California and Texas experience some of the most catastrophic fires in their history.
Unlike a blizzard, an ice storm brings freezing rain, which can encase anything it touches in a block of ice. In 2009 the central US and Great Britain are frozen solid.
Since the dawn of civilization lightning strikes have caused instant destruction to towns, crops, and forests. But 2016 was an electric year. Hundreds of Norwegian livestock are stuck down in an instant.
For the people of Haiti and Chile, the Earth rumbles, bringing with it cataclysmic destruction. The Earthquakes of 2010 rank massively on the Richter scale, reaching scores of nearly 9.0.
Earthquakes can not only shatter a city, but they can summon massive tidal waves that sometimes cause even more devastation. In 2004 and 2011 Indonesia and Japan are both victims of devastating tsunamis.
Texas is home to some of the most damaging hail storms on record. Without warning, in 1995 and 2012, softball sized hail rains destruction from the skies, and shelter is hard to come by.