Last year’s global weather was a wild ride

Back in the middle of January, I started to write about the top weather events around the world. I then took a break from that to tackle a good question from one of our younger readers.

Since then, I have received several good questions from other young readers, or their parents pretending to be young readers. Either way, I have plenty of questions to answer over the next couple of months, but keep them coming.

For this issue, we are going back to finish our look at the top weather stories from around the world in 2024.

Starting our look in Asia, typhoon Yagi hit and combined with the already wet monsoon season in September to bring catastrophic flooding to parts of Southeast Asia and left more than 500 people dead.

The Philippines saw two major typhoons or hurricanes in 2024, which resulted in significant flooding and landslides.

These regions also saw extreme heat in 2024. India saw a heat wave in April and May that brought what is known as “red alert” temperatures with daytime highs pushing 47 C.

Japan also experienced extreme heat in 2024 with the summer coming in as the hottest one on record. It was so warm that Mount Fuji remained snow-free at the end of October, which was the latest it has been snow-free since accurate records began being kept 130 years ago.

Australia had a fairly quiet year weather wise, but even it did not escape unusual weather.

The state of Victoria had a severe weather outbreak in February in which at least a half million homes were left without power.

The region then saw a massive swing in temperatures as August became the warmest on record in that country by a huge margin of 3 C.

Colder weather then followed later in the year with Canberra Airport and Adelaide both experiencing their lowest spring temperatures on record. These low temperatures were a couple of the few lowest temperature records set in 2024.

Across Europe in 2024, just like most other parts of the world, heavy rainfall events grabbed most of the headlines.

Storm Boris brought record-breaking rainfall and severe flooding to central and eastern regions of Europe in September. A remarkable 12 storms were named by the UK Met Office during the 2023-24 storm season.

This was the highest number of named storms in a season since storm-naming was introduced in 2015.

Despite the United Kingdom having its coolest summer since 2015, much of Europe experienced a hotter than average season.

Austria had its warmest summer on record, Spain had its warmest recorded August, Finland also saw its warmest August while Switzerland came in at its second warmest August on record.

Looking at North America, the year started off with an unusually strong hurricane before the end of June. Hurricane Beryl swept through the Caribbean and at times reached Category 5 strength, which was the earliest formation of a Category 5 hurricane on record.

This storm then slowly worked its way into the Gulf of Mexico and eventually made landfall in Texas on July 8.

It ended up being a very busy hurricane season, peaking with Hurricane Helen, which from Sept. 24-27 brought widespread devastation to the big bend area of Florida and is considered the strongest hurricane to hit the region since 2017.

Author: Daniel Bezte is a teacher by profession with a BA in geography, specializing in climatology, from the University of Winnipeg. He operates a computerized weather station near Birds Hill Park, Manitoba.

Tags: weather, monsoon, flooding, extreme heat, heat-wave, heavy rainfall, typhoon, landslides