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Vocabulaire: natural catastrophes...

We know that the history of our planet was a succession of glaciations, warming-ups, eruptions and several chaotic periods... till it reached a "balance" that we think and hope is well-assured, but which is, in fact, very fragile. 

From time to time, natural catastrophes threaten this balance somewhere in the globe, or anywhere in fact... These catastrophes always have a meteorological or geological origin... most often caused or aggravated by the clumsy interventions of generations of human beings...  They touch: air, water, earth, and fire...

1) "Water, water everywhere..." (S. T. Coleridge) Water, coming from the sky or from the oceans... an important element!

Clouds and drizzle	Pouring rain	A downpour
A (thunder)storm	A tornado (a twister)	The eye of the cyclone
A flood	A hurricane	A storm at sea

2) As the drawing below shows it, our earth was made of very unstable plates, some of which are at the bottom of the seas and oceans ... Their movements lead to very diverse phenomena, at the surface of the globe, causing hundreds, or even thousands of victims...

A rockfall	A landslide	An earthquake (here in a city)
A quake destroying roads and bridge	Houses of cards swept away	A  tsunami (live)

3) FIRE and ICE...

"The climate is changing" ... "The greenhouse effect causes global warming..." We can hear these words again and again, without believing them really, and without wanting to make an effort to take them into account... The results? You can see them above and some others below...

A heat wave	Drought	Fire
An eruption and a lava flow	Black ice	An avalanche

This splendid picture shows a volcanic eruption,  which really looks like fireworks...

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1. When Tom was on holiday in Brittany, he was surprised by the regular stormtornadodrizzleeruptionI don't know wetting everything through.


2. 'It never rains but it pours' is a British saying because, of course, a stormpouring rainquakedrizzleI don't know is quite frequent in Britain...


3. What frightens me in a thunder stormtornadolandslidedrizzleearthquakeI don't know isn't the lightning, which I know is dangerous, but the thunder which startles and scares me...


4. A drizzlelandslidetornadorockfallI don't know (or twister) is a very strange devastating phenomenon concentrated on a very small area and causing everything to be destroyed: some people have underground shelters.


5. In some countries, during the monsoon season, there are regular quakesfloodseruptionsdrizzleI don't know... The earth being soaked for days, the fields and houses may be covered with water ...


6. After so much rain, the avalancheearthquakelandslidefiresI don't know could have been predicted... Some people weren't lucky: their house toppled over the edge of the cliff and was destroyed...


7. A thunder stormearth quakedrizzletsunamiI don't know : imagine a giant, gigantic wave destroying and washing away everything and everyone... A vision of nightmare!


8. In 79 AD, the landslideavalancheeruptionearth quakeI don't know of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii and buried it under volcanic ash.


9. It snowed so much in the last two days that everyone could predict a high risk of eruptionearthquakefloodavalancheI don't know. Of course, some careless skiers triggered a big one.


10. Western Europe has just gone through an all-time highest temperatures and the longest heatwavelandslideearth quakeeruptionI don't know ever. Everybody is longing for rain and freshness...