The weather is notoriously unpredictable. A well-dressed weatherman smiles brightly through your television on Monday morning, promising you a sunny day, only to be caught in a hailstorm and late for work in a dented car.
The weather can also be extremely dangerous. Tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards, to name just a few, wreak havoc around the world every year, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
Below is a list of some of the most terrifying weather events on Earth that have been captured on camera or painted for posterity and served as a constant warning to seek shelter early.
An ice storm descended upon northern New England, northern New York as well as southern Canada between 5 and 9 January 1998 and was heavily influenced by a strong “El-Nino” pattern that had been observed during the 1997 and 1998 winter period.
The storm caused loss of electricity to five million people, destroyed 11,000 hydro poles in Ontario alone, led to the deaths of 35 people and caused $3 billion worth of damage. In addition to this, around 300,000 farm animals perished from the cold.
Dubbed the Great Ice Storm of 1998, the storm was a combination of five smaller ice storms and let to the deployment of 16,000 Canadian military personnel; the largest deployment since the Korean war.
In 2014, scientists released a study that found pregnant women’s stress levels during the ice storm affected the genetic expression of their children. This meant that the possibility exists that these children were at greater risk to develop asthma or diabetes, because of the change in their genetic expression.
