Top 10 Most Terrifying Natural Disaters

[16hockjo]

10. Typhoon Tip

Pacific typhoons are generally more powerful than Atlantic hurricanes, because the former have much more water over which they can gather strength.

On October 12, 1979, Tip made history with the lowest air pressure ever recorded at sea level on Earth: 870 mbars. Standard sea level air pressure is 1,013.25 mbars. Hurricane Andrew only made it to 922 mbars.

Tip had one 1 minute sustained winds of 190 mph. It killed 99 people, a low number compared to some of the others on this list, but this must be placed in the perspective of a long warning before the typhoon strikes.

44 of the fatalities were fishermen in the open Pacific. Tip sank or grounded 8 ships. One of these was a giant freighter that the storm broke in half. Not only was it the strongest cyclone, it was also the largest ever recorded, half the size of the United States, excluding Alaska.


9.The Lake Nyos Limnic Eruption


Limnic eruptions are one of the most bizarre natural disasters known. The criteria required for one to occur make them very rare. Lake Nyos is in a very remote area of the Cameroonian jungle. It is not very large, only 1.2 miles by 0.75 miles, but it is quite deep, 682 feet. Under the bed, a magma chamber is leaking carbon dioxide into the water. This changes the water into carbonic acid. Carbon dioxide is 1.5 times denser than air, which is why it will not rise from the bottom of a lake, unless shoved up by another force. There are only three such lakes known on Earth.

On August 21, 1986, the carbon dioxide at the bottom of the lake suddenly erupted all at once, 1.6 million tons of it, and released a cloud of carbon dioxide from the lake. This cloud, being heavier than air, hugged the ground contours, and blew out of the lake at 60 mph, went downhill throughout the area at up to 30 mph, and displaced all the oxygen in several small villages, suffocating between 1,700 and 1,800 people, not counting all their livestock.

The force of the gas expulsion also blew out the lake water itself, in an 80 ft high tsunami that stripped the trees, shrubs, and soil off one side of the shore.

[Sylvia]

No. 7 is probably my mum getting off her arse XD

[16hockjo]

No. 7 is probably my mum getting off her arse XD

Ha

[16hockjo]

8.The 1960 Chile Earthquake

The most powerful earthquake ever recorded struck near Valdivia, Chile on May 22, 1960, at 2:11 PM local time. As many as 6,000 people were killed. Many more would have been, had it not been for Chile’s preparedness for earthquakes, and the remote location of the epicenter.

Eyewitnesses reported that the entire world appeared as if God had seized one end of it like a rope, and slung it as hard as he could. 40% of the houses in Valdivia were razed to the ground. Cordon Caulle, a nearby active volcano, was ripped open and forced to erupt.

The quake measured 9.5 in magnitude, and 35 foot high waves were recorded 6,000 miles away. Of all the seismic energy of the 20th Century, including the 2004 Indian Ocean quake, 25% was concentrated in the 1960 Chile quake.

It caused 82 foot high waves to travel down the Chilean coast. Hilo, Hawaii was destroyed. The quake possessed twice the surface energy yield the 2004 Indian Ocean quake, and equalled 178 billion tons of TNT. This would have powered the entire United States, at 2005 energy consumption levels, for 740 years.

7.The 2003 European Heat Wave

Europe is not accustomed to hot summers. Give them a break, hot summers almost never happen there. But in 2003, they got hit with one that would make the southeastern United States, or the Australian outback sit back and marvel.

This lister is from North Carolina, where hot summers are expected and prepared for. In Europe, most of the homes built within the last 50 years before 2003 were not equipped with air conditioners, because none had ever been needed. Now, well over half of them have equipped themselves for the future.

There were at least 14,802 deaths from the heat in France alone, most of them old people in nursing homes, or in single family homes without the ability to cool off. The heat dried up most of Europe, and severe forest fires broke out in Portugal. Some 2,000 people died there from the heat.

About 300 died in Germany, where the weather is usually very cold to delightfully mild; 141 in Spain, where the temperature actually gets into the 90s Fahrenheit once in a great while; 1,500 in the Netherlands. Multiple temperature records, having lasted since the 1700s, were broken, then broken again a week later: 106.7 Fahrenheit in Brono, Switzerland. This melted a lot of Alpine glaciers into flash floods. 104.7 in Bavaria, Germany. 103 in Paris. The new record in Edinburgh, Scotland is now 91.2, which is unheard of there.

The wine harvest came a month early to save the grapes. 75% of Ukraine’s wheat crops were parched to death.

[16hockjo]

6.The Storm of the Century

From March 12 to 13, 1993, a cyclonic storm formed off the east coats of the United States, so vast in size that it caused a unique hodgepodge of severe weather.

Rarely does a single storm system cause blizzards from the Canada/U. S. border all the way down to Birmingham, Alabama, but this one did, and Birmingham received 12 to 16 inches of snowfall in one day and night. This was accompanied everywhere with hurricane-force wind gusts of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The Florida panhandle received up to 4 inches, and the strange thing is that 5 people were killed by tornadoes, in the middle of this blizzard.

The Appalachians of North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia received as much as 3.5 feet of snow, with drifts up to 35 feet. 300 people froze to death throughout the eastern half of the country when the electrical power was knocked out by falling trees. 100 mph wind gusts reached all the way to Havana, Cuba.

[Connor]

Hehe, a big storm is when my mum yells at me. o_O God, the people across the street can hear EVERYTHING!!!

[gheener]

where does hati and chili earthquakes come into this? and the massive one in Indonesia

[16hockjo]

where does hati and chili earthquakes come into this? and the massive one in Indonesia

They All Had Epicenters In The Ocean, So Technically, Even Though The Quakes Were Major, They Werent As Bad As Future Listings

[16hockjo]

5. The Great Flood of 1931
The deadliest natural disaster ever recorded occurred through the winter, spring, and summer of 1931 in central China. There are three major rivers draining this area, the Yangtze, the Yellow, and the Huai. All three flooded catastrophically, because the winter snowstorms were particularly heavy in the mountains around the river basins, and when spring began, all this snow melted and flowed into the rivers.

Then the spring brought particularly heavy rains. Then the cyclone season, which usually brings only 2 storms per year, brought 10, 7 of them in July. All this water swelled the three major rivers, especially the Yellow River, and because they drain a very large, very flat area of China, somewhere between 3.7 and 4 million people were drowned or starved.

Nanjing City, China’s capital at the time, became an island surrounded by over 100,000 square kilometers of water, more area than the state of Indiana, or all of Portugal.

[nicholai]

hmmm a terrifying natuaral disaster ....... ME BIRTH!!

nicho