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while the rest of the world worries about a heatwave, for some parts of the Australian outback, extreme heat is simply a way of life. 3 Australia holds some impressive records for sheer volume of water. Back in 1893, the tiny settle- ment of Crohamhurst in Queensland recorded a staggering 907 millimetres of rain in just 24 hours. To put that in perspective, that is nearly a full metre of water dumping onto the ground in a single day—roughly twice the average annual rainfall for many other parts of the world. It’s a vivid reminder that when the atmosphere decides to let go of its moisture, it doesn’t do it by halves. 4 In New Zealand, extreme weather is often a result of geography meeting the Pacific. In early 2023, the Auckland Anniver- sary floods proved just how quickly “wet weather” can turn into a crisis. The city experi- enced its wettest day on record, with some areas receiving more than 240 millimetres of rain in just 24 hours—a sig- nificant portion of the city’s annual rainfall in a single day. The event transformed suburban streets into rivers, demonstrating how even urban landscapes aren’t immune to the sheer force of a sudden, atmospheric deluge. 5 Hurricane Who? We’ve been nam- ing storms since the 19th century, thanks to a meteorologist in Australia who started naming them after politicians he disliked. Using female names caught on in the United States in the 1950s. Weather reports even included sexist cliches about “temperamental” storms “flirting” with coasts. Male names got folded into the mix by 1979, after Florida fem- inist Roxcy Bolton cam- paigned for equality. 6 The association with destruction can make hurri- cane monikers plunge in popularity as baby names, which is what happened to Katrina after 2005 and then Ida after 2021. Both were Category 5 hurricanes, the most catastrophic on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, with winds of more than 157 mph. Particu- larly bad storms such as these have had their names retired by reader ’ s digest 46 may 2026 the World Meteorologi- cal Organization (WMO) , the group that selects the names. The WMO lists 21 alphabeti- cal names each year (it skips Q, U, X, Y and Z). All 21 names were used in both 2020 and 2021. 7 maybe not with cats and dogs, but it really does rain animals sometimes. Tornadoes can pick up critters and carry them long distances, leading to accounts of frogs or fish falling from the sky as recently as last year, when anchovies rained down on San Francisco. 8 Some say animals can predict the weather, though many such theories are unproved. Purported patterns include cows lying down ahead of rain and birds flying lower prior to storms. One link that has been proved is that coastal sharks swim deeper into the water during the drop in baro- metric pressure more frequent heat waves and bigger storms. Earlier this year, Cyclone Freddy raged for a record 34 days, hitting parts of Africa. Human activity is known to compound the disastrous effects of extreme weather too. In British Columbia, in 2021, torrential rain over forest areas that had been clear-cut led to deadly mudslides. Major flooding in Ger- many and Belgium in 2021 and Australia’s unprecedented bush fires of 2020 have also been attributed to climate change. 12 After burst- ing onto the scene in the 1970s, the disas- ter-movie genre—with hits such as The Posei- don Adventure and The Swarm— really took off in the 1990s. Even so, Volcano , Hard Rain and Avalanche , to name a few, just couldn’t match the success of one of the decade’s biggest blockbusters: Twister . that precedes tropical storms. 9 ice can increase the weight of tree branches thirtyfold. During the Great Ice Storm of 1998, freezing rain brought down millions of trees across Canada and the northeastern United States. Wide- spread power outages left more than 5 million people without electric- ity—some for a month. 10 Blizzards can wreak similar havoc, and they can happen in unlikely places. During Iran’s 1972 blizzard— called the worst in his- tory—almost 26 feet of snow fell over nearly a week. “Once-in-a-gen- eration” storms such as this are happening more often as polar winds meet warmer- than-usual winter conditions. 11 Rising average temperatures across the globe are contributing to readersdigest.com.au 47 17 Things