In May a mile-wide tornado obliterated large areas of the Oklahoman town of Moore, killing 23 people. ‘It wasn’t your typical twister,’ one survivor said, ‘more a giant black wall of destruction.’ Six months later a typhoon with far deadlier consequences cut a swath through the Philippine islands of Leyte and Samar. Topping out at 196mph, it was the most powerful recorded storm ever to strike land, bringing with it almost a foot of rain and an 18ft storm surge. At least 4,000 people were killed; Tacloban, home to 220,000, was all but wiped off the map. A brutal Australian heatwave obliged the nation’s Bureau of Meteorology to add a new colour to its forecast maps: a livid purple denoting previously off-scale temperatures of 52-54C.
It was much the same in California, where the driest year on record engendered a wildfire that laid waste to much of Yosemite National Park. Earlier in the year a rampaging blaze in Arizona killed an elite squad of 19 firemen in a single incident. Across the Pacific in eastern China the highest temperatures in 140 years allowed adventurous locals to grill prawns on manhole covers. Data released this year suggest an unsettling trend: heat records have been broken around the world with increasing regularity over the past half-century, while those for extreme cold are proving ever more resilient.Picture: PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images