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Mother Nature has shaped our world in ways that no army or leader ever could. Join us as we count down the most extraordinary meteorological events that altered the course of human history! From devastating blizzards to strategic fog, these incredible moments prove that sometimes the weather truly does decide who wins and who loses. What's the worst storm you've ever experienced? Let us know below!
Transcript
00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at naturally occurring meteorological events
00:05that ended up changing the course of history entirely. The Great Blizzard of 1888. Sometimes,
00:16it takes one unexpected event for people to realize change is needed. The East Coast of
00:21the United States learned that in 1888, when they were hit with a sudden, massive snowstorm in mid-March.
00:28The Blizzard of 1888 crippled the entire Northeast. Severely impacted areas saw just under five feet
00:35of snow. Countless unprepared citizens were trapped in their homes by the time the Great
00:40Blizzard of 1888 ended. It took eight days to clear the rail line between New York and Connecticut alone.
00:46It was clear the East Coast had no way of preventing total shutdown during intense meteorological
00:52outbreaks. Officials saw a golden opportunity to move transportation and communication systems
00:58underground. It forced a lot of soul searching and thinking about how cities moved and lived
01:06and breathed and operated. In 1897, Boston opened the country's first subway system, and New York
01:13followed suit in 1904. Besides helping out during blizzards, it also resulted in less congestion above
01:20ground, particularly in Boston. Throughout the 20th century, more metropolitan areas along the
01:26Midwest and West Coast adopted the system. Now, millions of rides are taken per day across the
01:32country. What started out as a precautionary measure has revolutionized travel and infrastructure
01:37as we know it. The fog of 1776. Adverse weather isn't always negative. In some cases, it's a key
01:50factor in a country gaining independence. One such example occurred in August 1776.
01:56General George Washington and thousands of exhausted continental soldiers found themselves trapped.
02:02It was one year into the American Revolutionary War,
02:05and the Continental Army had just lost to the British in the Battle of Long Island.
02:10Hundreds were killed, and even more were captured. George Washington knew he couldn't lose anyone else.
02:15Losing the army ultimately becomes what would mean the death of the revolution.
02:20With the remaining soldiers backed up against the East River, and the enemy moving in,
02:24it seemed the revolution was over. Their only chance was to flee to Manhattan. They began their escape
02:29on the night of the 29th, and their hope dimmed as morning approached. Just then, a thick fog rolled
02:35in and obscured them from view. Everyone made it across safely. The fog lifted, as the story goes,
02:42right after the last troops end on Manhattan Island. With their second chance secured,
02:46the Patriots began fighting harder. Things turned around by the end of the year, and by 1783, they'd officially won.
02:53Much of that renewed morale can be credited to that night. Had the fog not been there,
02:59the United States as we know it may not exist. A reminder that sometimes the most powerful force
03:04in history is the weather. Russian winter and Rasputitsa, 1941. Who knew that all it would take
03:11to reveal weakness in Hitler's army was some snow and mud? In 1941, the German dictator began his plan to
03:19invade and take over Russia. On December 18th, Hitler signs off on Fuhrer Directive Number 21,
03:31a plan for a massive invasion of the Soviet Union the following year. Operation Barbarossa.
03:39Little did he know how ill-equipped he and his men would be for the elements there. It all began
03:44with
03:44that year's Rasputitsa, a notoriously muddy season in Eastern Europe. Two times a year,
03:50a snow melts in the spring, and during heavy rain in the fall, the soil turns into a thick mud,
03:55making it difficult to move heavy cargo cross-country. It slowed down the invading troops'
04:00entrance into the Eastern Front, pushing back their timeline by months. The Soviets, while also impacted,
04:06were better equipped to handle the terrain. They constantly fought the German forces,
04:10forces, which weakened them over time. By the time winter rolled around, the invaders hadn't gotten
04:15any closer to achieving their goals. Neither the Germans' uniforms nor equipment were weatherproofed,
04:21and the conditions were so bad that they couldn't conduct airstrikes.
04:25It was always said that Russia's greatest general was General Winter. So the Russians were much better
04:31prepared for winter than the Germans. With their side weakened, the Soviets attacked and pushed the enemy
04:39back by miles. When it was all said and done, Germany had revealed flaws in their strategy and ignited
04:46the Eastern Front, one of the most deadly phases of World War II.
04:50In a single campaign, Hitler has lost an army and began to lose the faith of the German people.
04:58The year without a summer. You might think that a global temperature drop would result in society
05:04coming to a screeching halt. Yet, during 1816, also known as the year without a summer,
05:10people adapted. Throughout the summer of 1816, frost and snow blanketed the northeastern United States
05:18and eastern Canada. It's believed to have been caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in present-day
05:23Indonesia. The ash spread so far that temperatures decreased worldwide by about a degree.
05:29The blue areas on Michael's map show where the cooling was most dramatic.
05:34Crops died out, and China's monsoon season was impacted. There were also significant societal
05:40impacts. For example, it caused a mass American migration, which may have led to Illinois and
05:47Indiana being established. For settlers crossing the Appalachians, Indiana was a promising destination.
05:53The Ohio River was one of the main routes west, and boats often stopped in Indiana, bringing in new
05:58settlers. Joseph Smith went to Palmyra, New York, the first step to him starting the Church of Jesus
06:04Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Germany, Carl Dreis reportedly adapted to the lack of oaths by inventing
06:11horseless vehicles. His invention bore the hallmarks of a modern bike. Only the pedals were missing.
06:17In Switzerland, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and their friends held their famous scary story contest to
06:23pass the time. Frankenstein was the result, leading to the birth of the horror genre.
06:31It goes to show that even in periods of great strife, humans find a way to overcome and begin anew.
06:38The 1970 Bola Cyclone. In 1970, East Pakistan was devastated by a brutal tropical storm.
06:46There raged on November the 12th what was simply the worst of the many cyclones the two million
06:51people who live here have ever experienced. The Bola Cyclone caused hundreds of thousands of deaths,
06:58food sources to be ruined, and small towns being swept away. Those impacted turned to their leader,
07:04President Khan. He proved to be unhelpful, with only minimal relief in the first 10 days following the
07:10event. Leaders from West Pakistan did nothing. One thing was clear to the survivors. Those in place to
07:17protect them didn't even care. As a result, citizens everywhere boycotted that year's election.
07:23This allowed Bengali Mujibor Rahman to win with a vast majority. However, his rise wasn't accepted,
07:35and in 1971, a brutal ethnic cleansing was carried out against other Bengali citizens.
07:42This led to the Bangladesh Civil War, which lasted eight months. Pakistan surrendered, allowing Rahman
07:48to gain control. By the end of the year, Bangladesh had declared its independence. Under Rahman's elected
07:55leadership, the economy and the country finally began to heal from the initial ordeal it had been
08:00through the year prior. Got some bad weather coming up and need a way to pass the time?
08:05The WatchMojo 24-7 livestream has all your rainy day entertainment covered. Scan the QR code on
08:11screen now to join for non-stop pop culture fun. Russian Winter 1812. Germany isn't the only European
08:24nation to have taken on General Frost and failed. Over a century prior to Hitler's invasion attempt,
08:30Napoleon Bonaparte tried taking over Russia. Never in living memory had so large an army been assembled.
08:38Although he began in June of 1812, his army of 610,000 were held off for months. Between counterattacks
08:45and villages being burned, the French saw a significant decrease in their men and in their
08:50supplies. On November 6th, a blizzard descended upon them. They didn't have proper attire for themselves
09:04or their horses, and they soon succumbed to hypothermia and gangrene. Twelve thousand men died
09:10in three days. Bonaparte abandoned his army in early December, and his men fled weeks later. His bad luck with
09:17weather didn't end there. During the Battle of Waterloo in present-day Belgium, a massive deluge
09:23turned the battlefield into a mudslide, where his cannons failed and his attempts to move uphill were
09:28squandered. I felt that fortune was abandoning me, Napoleon said. I no longer had the feeling that I was
09:35sure to succeed. His defeat there led to his permanent exile in Saint Helens. In the end, all it took
09:42to
09:42take down one of France's greatest military leaders was a couple of missed meteorological reports.
09:53Hurricane Katrina. Although the United States experiences tropical storms every year, some have
09:59proven to be much more devastating than others. The one that stood out above the rest in terms of
10:03destruction and cost is Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the southeastern coast in 2005.
10:14The immediate effects were painful, including countless people losing their homes, pets,
10:19and their lives. It also had a lasting ripple effect on just about everything else. Shores were eroded,
10:25with multiple islands being damaged. Dozens of tankers tilted over and spilled a combined seven
10:31million gallons of oil. We're hearing a lot of anxiety about the uncertainty of what the future
10:36holds. You know, we can sometimes smell the oil burning in the air. We can sometimes see,
10:41you know, the oil or the tar in our marshes. Speaking of fuel, it didn't just cause environmental
10:47harm. The inability to produce or import it after the hurricane made prices increase at the pump.
10:53Meanwhile, the recovery process revealed that the Bush administration had significantly
10:58decreased FEMA's budget. The government was subject to immense criticism for their failure in properly
11:03evacuating cities or providing relief, with survivors being left without food and drinkable water.
11:09It was a failure of government at every level. The typhoon exposed and exacerbated structural issues
11:15within the country. And the worst part is that some areas are still impacted to this day.
11:21When the levees broke, it broke for everybody. The Dust Bowl. Water-based squalls aren't the only ones
11:27that cause generational damage. Throughout the 1930s, prairie regions across the United States
11:33were impacted by multiple periods of drought. The harm was exacerbated by harmful farming methods,
11:43including settlers ruining topsoil and destroying natural grasses. The Dust Bowl reduced the dirt to
11:49a crumbled state, which was then picked up by wind and turned into terrifying dust storms.
11:54In Texas, many dust storms were mild, but there were a few severe ones called black blizzards.
12:00Picture a snowstorm, but instead of fluffy snow falling from the sky, imagine dark, choking dust
12:06swirling all around. They accelerated the already devastating Great Depression. There was a mass
12:12migration from the area, with millions fleeing the area for California. Music and art were also
12:18influenced by this period as well, including legends like John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.
12:23I seen the wind so high that it blowed my fences down. On an environmental note, the disaster led to
12:31the creation of the Department of Agriculture, with the hopes of conserving soil. Unfortunately,
12:36by the end of the decade, hundreds of millions of acres worth of topsoil had been lost.
12:41These were situations, these were times that everybody felt, and everybody was the same. The research that
12:49I've done, the people that I've interviewed from Illinois to Nebraska to Texas, everybody was in the
12:55same situation and it was not pleasant. Considering it takes between 500 and 1,000 years to recover a single
13:02inch, even if the country never lost another iota of it again, it would take multiple millennia for it to
13:08fully replenish.
13:09We were also responsible for this blowing by the method in which we were farming at that time,
13:16as were the rest of them. The storm that shaped D-Day. If you had a nickel for every time
13:21the United
13:22States was aided by natural events during times of war, you'd have at least two.
13:28As D-Day got closer and closer, Dwight Eisenhower kept track of the weather forecasts he was being
13:35given, and then would compare them with the way the weather actually turned out.
13:40Besides the crossing of the East River in 1776, the army saw similar luck almost two centuries later,
13:47in 1944, during World War II. They had a plan to charge into Normandy, and if all went well,
13:53then they would destabilize Germany's defenses. It is the largest military operation ever undertaken in
13:58history. It involves so many people, so many layers of military apparatus.
14:05General Dwight D-Eisenhower originally selected June 5th. The day before the strike,
14:10their on-site meteorologist, James Stagg, stopped them and noted adverse conditions coming in.
14:16This front would move quickly over Ireland and through the channel overnight on Sunday and through
14:22Monday, so that by the pre-dawn hours of the 6th, the weather would have improved sufficient,
14:30as I thought, to let the operation go forward again. He suggested they wait until the 6th instead.
14:39Meanwhile, the Germans had noticed the squall as well, and assumed it wouldn't end until mid-month.
14:44As a result, they believed that no attack would commence.
14:48Now, this forecast was made in the infancy of forecasting, long before satellites,
14:53telecommunications, or computers. Imagine their surprise when multiple beaches were stormed days
14:59later. The battle marked a turning point. With the Atlantic wall being dissolved,
15:03Germany was vulnerable, and they surrendered in 1945. This is a solemn, but glorious hour.
15:10Had the United States not heated the rain, then it could have gone haywire and changed the course
15:16of the war entirely. Protestant wind. In 1588, England and Elizabeth I were under threat. The
15:23Spanish Armada had been tasked with overthrowing her by Philip II, who wanted to reintroduce Catholicism
15:29to the area. Elizabeth encouraged adventurers like Francis Drake to attack Spanish treasure fleets,
15:35and cut her in on the proceeds. However, the armada's vessels weren't built to withstand
15:40rougher waters. This became clear following an intense battle with the English. Mid-fight,
15:46the winds changed direction. It was the final straw for the Spanish army,
15:50who attempted to return home by sailing around Ireland and Scotland. It was a perfect storm,
15:55no pun intended, of variables. With the conditions getting worse,
15:59and the fleet unable to navigate the waters, it ended with several of their ships crashing.
16:04In Ireland, the drained wreck site of La Trinidad Balancera reveals how one of the mightiest ships
16:11of the armada ended her days. England believed it was a sign from God. On a global level,
16:18it changed the way power was concentrated. With Spain's army destroyed, other countries could safely
16:23discover new countries. The weakness of the Spanish empire was its actual dependence on wealth. And
16:31when other powers began to rise, like the Dutch, like the English, like the French, then these powers
16:39had much greater economic depth. Beyond that, England was officially established as a dominant power.
16:46They expanded, which led to the establishment of Jamestown in 1607. When you realize it all hinged
16:53on a simple directional change in the air, it makes you realize just how important the weather is.
17:13What's the worst storm you've ever experienced? Let us know in the comments below.
17:23We'll see you about the coming soon.enezuela