Climate top 10
July 15, 2014
1. The hottest day in history occurred on 10 July 1913 in Death Valley in the US. The mercury climbed to 56.7 degrees Celsius (134.1 degrees Fahrenheit) near the town of Furnace Creek, California.
2. The village of Oymyakon in Russian Siberia is right at the other end of the spectrum. It's the coldest residential town in the world having reached a record low of minus 71.2 degrees Celsius in 1926. Wostok station in Antarctica has dropped to minus 89.2 degrees Celsius.
3. The city of Yuma in Arizona is the sunniest place in the world. On average, the sun shines 313 days a year. By comparison, the South Pole gets the least amount of sun: the polar night lasts more than half a year.
4. Deadly hail: the most dangerous hailstorm to ever take place was in Gopalganj, Bangladesh was in 1986, which killed 92 people. Some hailstones that day weighed more than one kilogram. The biggest hailstone on record is stored "on ice" in the US. It measures close to half a meter (19.69 inches) in diameter.
5. Cherrapunji, India holds the world record for the largest amount of rainfall recorded in a 48 hour period. In June 1995, the city had 2,493 millimeters of rainfall. The most rain falls on the Hawaiian island of Kauai 350 rainy days a year.
6. Dried out: from 1903 until 1918, the residents of Arica in Chile went without a single drop of rain. That's 173 months of drought!
7. The world's most deadly cyclone hit Myanmar in May 2008. Cyclone Nargis is believed to have killed 138,000 people. Typhoon Haiyan had higher winds though, with speeds of up to 310 kilometers per hour (192.62 miles per hour) when it hit the Philippines in November 2013.
8. Snow in Cairo? Strange, but true. In December of last year the Egyptian capital was hit by snow for the first time in 112 years. In the center of the busy metropolis roads and schools were forced to close.
9. Maracaibo Lake in Venezuela has the most lightning strikes worldwide. At the point where the lake joins the Catatumbo River, lightning has been known to strike up to 60 times a minute.
10. Germany also holds a weather record for the most consecutive days of fog. In 1958, the Brocken peak in northern Germany had fog for 330 days straight. And in 1996 there was 242 hours of consecutive fog in the Thuringian Forest.