Scientists at the National Hurricane Center make their living predicting and tracking storms.
However, most say they have never found themselves in the middle of a disturbance like the one that currently grips their agency.
After the wettest June on record, better weather is promised - but not just yet
On Tuesday hailstones the size of 20p pieces smacked into the streets of south London; later in the week, officials at Wimbledon considered extending play into a third week because of the miserable weather; meanwhile, much of northern England is recovering from a deadly spate of heavy flooding.
The apocalyptic June weather has even led some people, notably former weather presenter John Kettley, to suggest that the British summer was over in April.
Comment: Time to watch "the day after tomorrow" again!
A strong earthquake shook parts of southern Mexico on Thursday night, sending thousands of residents fleeing into the streets. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage.
The magnitude-6.1 earthquake struck at 8:09 p.m. and was centered near the Chiapas state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez, 430 miles southeast of Mexico City, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors temblors worldwide.
Wildfires burned mobile homes, closed highways and forced evacuations from a popular wilderness park Saturday as firefighters worked through scorching heat to contain blazes throughout the West. No injuries were reported.
Lightning sparked about a dozen fires that had charred about 55 square miles in remote northern Nevada, where temperatures in Elko were expected to reach 98 degrees on Saturday.
A swarm of locusts reportedly destroyed the crops and other vegetations in Gedo province, southern Somalia. Our correspondent, Ahmed Salahi, in the region said millions of them spread out in the farming land of Luuq district where residents mainly depend on the harvesting of their farms for their livelihood.
Heavy rains and powerful winds have caused a power blackout in about 500 settlements in Ukraine in seven regions overnight. The worst hit were the Rovno, Kiev and Volyn regions, the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry reported on Saturday.
"The Easter Freeze of 2007 will go down as a historical event with lingering effects for years to come" says the climatologist for the University of Missouri Commercial Agriculture Program. "The magnitude of the hard freeze is nothing short of amazing considering all 114 counties in Missouri were affected. When including all the economic impacts of this event on agriculture and horticulture and the far-reaching impacts on communities as a whole, the April freeze will likely rank as one of the most costliest natural disasters on record for Missouri."
The speed of coastal erosion on Alaska's far northern coast has doubled over the past 50 years and coastal cliffs saturated with melting permafrost have crumbled into the sea as the world's climate has warmed, scientists report.
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| ©USGS/Gary D. Clow
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| A cliff collapses into the Beaufort Sea on Alaska's north coast, as the permafrost melts and no longer holds that earth solid.
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Using evidence from satellite observations and aerial photographs, two geologists at the U.S. Geological Survey have concluded that pack ice shrinking rapidly over the Beaufort Sea has probably caused the waves to surge more powerfully against the weakened cliffs.
Hundreds of emaciated seabirds have washed up dead along the south-eastern coast of America, alarming scientists who fear changes in the ocean could have affected the fish that the birds normally eat.
More than a thousand shearwaters, large gull-like birds that spend most of their lives far out to sea, have been found dead over the past two weeks on beaches stretching from the Bahamas to the Carolinas, say wildlife biologists.
It's a squid, it's an octopus, it's ... a mystery from the deep.
What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists.
The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority's deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.
"When we first saw it, I was really delighted because it was new and alive," said Jan War, operations manager at NELHA. "I've never seen anything like that."
Comment: Time to watch "the day after tomorrow" again!