On December 7, 2011, NOAA reported a record year for disasters, causing over $52 billion in damages in the US alone. That’s an average of $1 billion a week, and that says nothing of fatalities. With the weather we’ve seen and reported on, this is hardly a surprise. On April 27, 199 confirmed tornadoes devastated the southeast. Excessive heat and drought in the souther plain states caused over $10 billion in economic losses, and that’s only so far. One cost of the extensive droughts was the loss of millions of Christmas trees. The Joplin tornado, one of an outbreak of 180 from May 22-27, killed over 158 people and caused losses in excess of $9.1 billion. In the five days between January 29 and February 3 a major blizzard, now called the Groundhog Day Blizzard, killed at least 36 people.
In Canada, weather was so cold in Montreal that boiling water froze in midair. A week before the Joplin tornado, Slave Lake, Alberta was decimated by wildfires. In July, a tornado touched down in Calgary. On November 29, unprecedented winds shut down the downtown core and nearly caused a 747 to crash on landing. Overly warm weather two days before the year’s end killed a Canadian skier.
Heatwaves were prominent all over Europe and much of North America in the summer months, while drought ravaged has ravaged the Balkans since November, causing trade disruptions and crop problems. Drought has also devastated Afghanistan, East Africa, Kenya, and several other regions. In East Africa, the situation was so bad that residents had to choose between letting elephants or livestock die.
Too much water, responsible for flooding and landslides have lain waste to many regions. Columbia saw the worst flooding in its history in April. In the same month, Canadian troops were secured to aid in cleaning up the Montreal, Quebec floods. The deluge that hit Thailand is so severe that hard drive production took a serious downturn and it caused the deaths of more than 500 people. The hard drive shortage is expected to last into 2013. Cyclones caused chaos in several regions, dealing floods to Queensland, Australia, no fewer than 11 deaths in India. Typhoons brought thousands of lives to an end in the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan just to name a few.
Landslides and floods, most of which were triggered by typhoons and cyclones, wiped out large tracts in Central America and claimed over 110 lives. Twenty-four people were killed in Uganda on August 29, and in Seoul, 67 people died. Furthermore, there are now 10 unexploded landmines unaccounted for there.
This is just a brief summary of all the inclement weather we saw over 2011. For more complete lists of events, we have placed links to search pages on our site: floods, landslides, cyclones, typhoons, heat waves, drought, blizzard, tornado. Don’t forget to look at wild fires and hurricanes too.
