Floods and twisters: The world’s biggest weather stories of 2024
From raging floods to scale-topping hurricanes, these were the world’s biggest weather stories in 2024
Two scale-topping hurricanes raged over the Atlantic Ocean this summer. Enormous hailstones destroyed vehicles across the Chinese countryside. Historic floods raged throughout Europe.
Another round of deadly extremes battered every region around the world throughout 2024. Thousands of people died as a result of tumultuous storms, tragic floods, and excessive heat.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest weather stories we saw around the world this past year.
A wild, strange Atlantic hurricane season
Forecasters expected a record-hot Atlantic Ocean to pump out one storm after another this year. While that didn’t work out quite as they thought, it did turn out to be a very active—and rather strange—hurricane season.
Hurricane Beryl immediately vaulted into the records as the strongest storm we’ve ever seen so early in the season. That storm peaked at Category 5 intensity in the Caribbean on July 3—beating the previous record by a full week. Beryl was one of five hurricanes to slam into the United States during a two-month period this season.
Hurricane Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 27. Torrential rains fuelled by the storm and its excessive moisture swept north to produce devastating flooding in western North Carolina. Helene became one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in American history, with more than 200 people losing their lives in the storm and its subsequent floods.
A week later, Hurricane Milton explosively intensified in the Gulf of Mexico to become the season’s second scale-topping Category 5 storm. Its pressure dropped to 897 mb at one point, making it one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic ocean. Milton struck Florida’s Tampa Bay region as the first major hurricane to directly strike there in living memory.
In all, the season produced eighteen named storms—including eleven hurricanes and five major hurricanes, pushing all these metrics above average for a typical Atlantic hurricane season.
WATCH: The 2024 hurricane season is one that defied predictions
Super Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds in Asia
The Atlantic Ocean isn’t the only basin that churned out monstrous storms this year.
Multiple super typhoons raged in the western Pacific Ocean throughout 2024, including Super Typhoon Yagi. The storm reached its peak strength in the South China Sea not long before making landfall in China’s Hainan Province with the equivalent intensity of a Category 4 hurricane.
Yagi’s relatively unusual track made it one of the most intense typhoons ever recorded at landfall in northern Vietnam. The storm produced very heavy rainfall as it pushed inland through southeastern Asia; the ensuing floods killed hundreds of people in Thailand and Myanmar.
Devastating floods hammered Europe
Europe fell in the grips of repeated rounds of devastating floods this year as record-breaking storms swept the continent.
A surge of Arctic air sent a chaotic pattern spilling over Central Europe in the middle of September, unleashing torrential rains on Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania. Local officials said the ‘apocalyptic’ floods killed dozens of people throughout the region.
Even worse flooding befell the Iberian Peninsula a month later. An upper-level low got cut off from the jet stream and meandered over the western Mediterranean Sea, forcing repeated rounds of drenching rains to slosh over Spain. Hundreds of people died in the ensuing floods, becoming one of the region’s worst weather disasters in modern times.
WATCH: See Amazon river reduced to mud as it hits lowest level ever
Extreme heat fuels historic Amazonian wildfires
Extremes beget extremes. When one region deals with excessive precipitation, another region is inevitably going to see a complete lack of quenching rains.
High heat and little rain was a hallmark of the southern hemisphere’s winter this year. Wintertime temperatures soared into the 30s throughout central portions of South America, a spell of heat and dry weather that fuelled historic wildfires.
Brazil's space research agency reported in September that nearly 350,000 wildfires were burning throughout every country in South America, an all-time high for as long as the agency has monitored hot spots from space. The ensuing droughts were so bad that river levels in Brazil’s Rio Negro at Manaus reached a 122-year low.
A deadly year for twisters and severe storms
This past spring turned out to be one of the most active on record south of the border. The United States saw its second-most tornadic April and May, according to preliminary data collected by the U.S. Storm Prediction Center (SPC).
One particularly violent tornado outbreak on April 26 produced one of the most photogenic twisters in recent history. Traffic cameras near Lincoln, Nebraska, caught photos of an EF-3 tornado as it tore through nearby communities.
All told, more than 1,500 tornadoes were reported across the U.S. this year. Dozens of those tornadoes touched down in Florida during Hurricane Milton, growing into the state’s largest tornado outbreak on record. The historic onslaught of Florida twisters even produced three violent EF-3s, an exceptionally rare event in the state.
It’s not just the United States that had to deal with repeated outbreaks of severe thunderstorms this year.
Several rounds of severe weather in April left behind widespread damage in southern China. Hailstones larger than baseballs smashed windows and destroyed crops. Multiple destructive tornadoes were also reported.
The geography and climate of China makes the country highly susceptible to supercell thunderstorms that can produce giant hail and dangerous tornadoes.