What do you associate weather extremes with? For me it is shock and tragedy. Weather extremes impose a fatal threat to life of men, animals, and plants and shatter the peace of every day life. The slightest of imbalance within nature's cycles can affect the weather conditions at a larger scale.

The longer professional meteorologists and climate experts accumulate weather records, the more likely they are to find an extreme weather event, for example temperature extremes, tornadoes or hurricanes. The record for the coldest day or the driest month is bound to be surpassed the longer they keep records.

Climate change as a result partially of human activities plays not the last role in the weather extremes. Some scientists say that there is insufficient knowledge of the magnitude of natural climatic variations, especially solar radiation and ocean currents, to gauge how large the human impact is by comparison. But still it is admitted that climate change makes weather extremes more severe. High population densities are another factor that increases the number of dramatic weather catastrophes. Further societal changes, compounded by the effects of global warming, are expected to continue this trend.

The consequences of devastating weather extremes are hardly enumerated and the financial losses they bring are calculated by millions. During the past 25 years, financial losses from floods, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, hail, thunderstorms, and other natural disasters in the United States have averaged about $500 million per week and are mounting. Advocates of aggressive action to control global warming maintain say that catastrophes will become increasingly likely if we do not take drastic steps to curtail fossil-fuel consumption.

Nowadays we all, people who live in different parts of the world, witness tragedies that the recent most severe weather extremes brought. Mass media speaks a lot about them. TV, radio, and newspapers warn us about the places where they may occur. Unfortunately, cautious signals are not always properly taken into consideration even by people at high levels, for example tsunami in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, Malaysia and Indonesia at the end of December 2004 where people were going to celebrate Christmas.

This year 2006 in January a mudslide and accompanying rainfall killed at least 207 people on the north shore of the island of java and Indonesia.

Cold weather that began in December spread throughout Bangladesh and northern India lead to the first freeze in New Delhi in 70 years and killing at least 180 people throughout the region.

In January, the one of the coldest winters during the last twenty years, accompanied by heavy snowfall and high winds in areas, occurred throughout Russia, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia leaving hundreds of people dead. Snow fell throughout Europe, even as far south as the Greek Isles or the Portuguese sea resorts with record-setting snowfall and near-record cold in many areas.

On February 27th 2006, the Met Office issued a severe weather alert suggesting snow across several parts of the United Kingdom. The media have always latched on to the story with some papers announcing the arrival of the Blizzard of 06.