Weather Watch

This Weather Watch indicates recent activity only, since 1995. Data is summarized by year, with more detail and a cumulative extreme weather map available on the year's individual page. The trends can therefore be seen if one year and then the next is examined, in turn. This Weather Watch only reports activity that can be considered truly unusual. Typical weather, no matter how extreme, is not listed here. This is to show the recent trends, without clutter. Weather Watch stopped at the end of 1999, when the trend had become obvious.

• During 1995 the millennium trends of weather extremes began in ernest, with more severe drought, rain, snow and cold. Antarctica's Larsen ice shelf disintegrated. More hurricanes were named than ever before. It was the hottest year on record, following the hottest decade, with over 500 dying in a Chicago heat wave. Record snowstorms were recorded from Scandinavia to Buffalo, NY. Australia's Big Dry broke records while the deserts in the Sudan continued to encroach, while many areas worldwide such as New Jersey were experiencing drought for the first time. Deluges, such as the one washing away 10,000 head of cattle in China's Guangxi province, occurred.

• During 1996 world records on all fronts were broken. There were more major hurricanes than ever before recorded. Heat records were broken across the US. China's Qinghai province was devastated by the century's worst blizzard, while the US East Coast was also buried in record snowfalls, the wettest year on record. Drought continued to be experienced for the first time in many places worldwide, such as Slovenia. Record breaking deluges occurred, such as the 17 inch rainfall in Chicago and deluges causing horrendous flooding over many provinces in China.

• During 1997 a pattern of large areas being affected by severe weather, happening simultaneously in many parts of the world emerged. Deluges continued, with the US West Coast and North Dakota battered by record flooding in the spring, while Europe suffered extreme cold. Antartica continued to melt at a dramatic rate. Crop shortages caused by the erratic weather had become a trend. Simultaneous drought in Alaska's interior and record snowfall in Santiago, Chile occurred during early summer, while farmers in Romania were struck dead by sudden hail and lightning storms.
  
  During mid-summer, the Nordic countries and US Midwest and Argentina all experienced unusual and extreme heat waves, and record breaking flooding occurred in central Europe while both Bangladesh and China's Quandong Province struggled with severe floods, for the Quandong Province the second to strike within the same summer. By fall, the strongest El Nino in memory was causing simultaneous torrential rainfall in Somalia and Brazil and intractable drought in Indonesia. Year end found 1997 the hottest on record, with the most rain forests destroyed ever due to drought induced fire.

• During 1998 severe weather tightened its grip, becoming the norm, battering nearby locales in different ways. Example: on the same day on the East Coast of the US, the Northeast was being deluged, high winds tore through North Carolina, and half of Florida was on fire. Ice storms in Quebec caused the province to borrow power for the first time ever, and bitter cold swept many parts of the world such as Mexico, breaking records, while England sweltered in record heat. El Nino continued into 1998, the strongest ever recorded, with record breaking flooding in Peru and San Francisco. This El Nino was then followed by the strongest La Nina ever.
  
  Fires raged out of control in the jungles of Indonesia, the Amazon and Florida. Crop failures began to total, a devastation. Kenya rain was 500% above normal. A record number of 1008 tornadoes tore through the US, Mechanicville, New York and Alabama experiencing a level 5 on two different occasions, the strongest tornado possible, the hail in Louisiana 1/2 foot across. During July, Korea, China, and Slovakia experienced record breaking deluges, almost simultaneously. Where 1997 had been the hottest year on record, 1998 broke that record.

• During 1999, the hurricane season ran late and southern hemisphere cyclones came early. Hurricanes lined up, one behind the other, and marched across the Atlantic. The entire globe seemed under attack at the same time, with Hurricane Dennis threatening South Carolina, Tropical Storm Cindy ravaging West Africa, Tropical Storm Wendy striking Hong Kong, and Hurrican Greg assaulting the west coast of Mexico almost simultaneously. The unprecedented west-east Hurricane Floyd, a Category 5, came late in the season. Super-Cyclone 05B devastated India in November, and an unprecedented Hurricane Lothar battered Europe in December.
  
  The entire globe likewise seemed to be battling floods and mudslides, with flooding along the Caspian Sea in July, in New York City and South Carolina and Russia's North Caucasus in August, in Uganda and India's Manipur and Somalia and Bulgaria and South Korea and Ghana and Spain and Honduras in September, in Mexico's Tabasco and the Congo and Nepal and India's West Bengal and South Africa and Cambodia in October, in Ethiopia and Greece and Peru and Italy and Vietnam and Columbia and Brazil and New Zealand in November, and in Thailand and Yemeni and Bosnia and Venezuela and Indonesia and Nigeria and the Philippines in December.
  
  An entrenched drought on the East Coast of the US threatened to be the worst in memory, with seven states issuing drought advisories and 3/4 of all streams and rivers registering record or near record lows. More than 18 wildfires swept across Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and California. At the same time, the Manitoba region of Canada had wildfires out of control, and 2,000 brush fires burned out of control across Brazil. Israel had 7 months of drought with the Sea of Galilee at its lowest level in at least a century. Heat waves broke records in Europe and North Africa, and the warming trend created melting in the Artic as well as the Antarctic.