Natural Disasters

A Blizzard is a storm with winds of at least 35 mph and temperatures below 20°F, with enough falling or moving snow to reduce visibility to less than 1/4 mile. Blizzards often cause severe damage to buildings and can bury structures under many feet of drift snow.

In the United States, about 400 people die from blizzards each year, causing about 2,000 American deaths every 5 years caused by blizzards. Many more deaths occur worldwide.

Large Tsunamis may continue for days in some locations, reaching their peak often a couple of hours after arrival and gradually tapering off after that. The time between Tsunami crests ranges from approximately five minutes to two hours. How often do Tsunamis occur? On the average, two tsunamis occur per year throughout the world which inflict damage near the source. Approximately every 15 years a destructive, ocean-wide Tsunami occurs.

Hurricanes are one of natures most powerful storms. Also on average, a Hurricane last six days, but they can exist for only a few hours or for as long as two weeks. They can pack winds up to 160 mph, and unleash up to 2.4 trillion gallons of rain water in one day.The deadliest U.S. hurricane on record was a Category 4 storm that hit the island city of Galveston, Texas, in September

On average, more than 100,000 wildfires clear 4-5 million acres of land in the U.S. every year. The forest fire that incinerated northern British Columbia and Alberta grew to a final size of over 3.5 million acres. The largest wildfire in modern history was the Black Friday Bushfire in Australia's Victoria State in January 1939, burning some 4.9 million acres and claiming 71 lives.

The earth's surface consists of 20 constantly moving plates. The pressure increase from shifting plates can cause the crust to break. This break allows stress to be released as energy, which moves through the earth in the form of waves.The National Earthquake Information Center now locates about 20,000 earthquakes around the globe each year, or approximately 55 per day.Earthquakes can happen in any kind of weather.

A tornado is as a rotating, funnel-shaped cloud that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground with whirling winds that can reach 300 mph.Tornadoes can last from several seconds to more than an hour. The longest-lived tornado in history is really unknown, because so many of the long-lived tornadoes reported from the early-mid 1900s and before are believed to be tornado series instead. Most tornadoes last less than 10 minutes.