When Jack Buzzi looked out the window of his parents' home during the worst of the storm, he saw something terrible: his neighbor's house was floating on the water. Part of the top floor had broken off, and the rest of the house was shaking. At the same time, Buzzi was on the phone with his friend Jack Ward, whose sister Kathey Ward, 60, owned the house. The men feared that she was in danger.

Buzzi hung up the phone, put on boots and a raincoat, took two life jackets and went outside. Then he waded (跋涉) through deep water toward Kathey's house. He yelled at Kathey, but she didn't respond.

“The roof had fallen down,” Buzzi says. “I thought she was dead.”

He returned home and called Jack again. Jack told him he had finally reached his sister on the phone. She was trapped (困住) but uninjured. Buzzi headed back into the storm and finally found her on the second floor of her home. She was surprisingly calm.

“I knew you would come so I didn't worry,” Kathey said. She'd been sitting in the only room of the house that didn't break off. Buzzi gave her a life jacket and guided her through the water to his house.

The next morning, Buzzi and Kathey used a boat to rescue Kathey's sister Mary Ward and Mary's boyfriend, who'd been trapped in Mary's flooded house.

Returning back, Buzzi saw the local carpenter Nick Spino, who had spent the night on his neighbor's roof.

Despite a flooded basement (地下室), Buzzi let six neighbors stay with him until they left five days later.

“It's human nature, right?” he says. “We protect each other.”

Last year, the bushfires in Australia burned more than 12.35 million acres of land. At least 25 people were killed and 2000 homes destroyed. According to the BBC, that was the most casualties(伤亡) from wildfires in the country since 2009. The University of Sydney estimates that 480 million animals have died in South Wales alone.

Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst and climate researcher at Berkeley Earth, said warmer temperatures and extreme weather made Australia more susceptible to fires and increased the length of the fire season. "The drier conditions combined with record high temperatures in 2019 created main conditions for the disastrous fires. Australia's fires were worsened by the combination of those two. 2019 was the perfect storm for being the warmest year on record for Australia and the driest year on record for Australia," Hausfather added on Friday.

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said warmer ocean temperatures are also contributed to more variable weather around the world. Trenberth believes that global warming contributed to energy imbalances and hot spots in the oceans, which can create a wave in the atmosphere that locks weather patterns in places, causing longer rain events in Indonesia, for example, and at the same time contributing to drought in Australia. He said that once an area experiences drought conditions for two months or more, it increases the risk of fires catching and spreading. Those changing weather patterns due to global warming make drought events longer.

Climate experts stress that climate change is not the only factor in the severity(严重) of wildfires. How land is managed can also impact the amount of fuel available for fires. Practices like controlled bums and other factors can impact the risk to people and property, such as warning systems and the type of development in a given area. Changing those policies has great potential to limit future damage from wildfires along with changes to how fire management resources are dispatched(派遣).

Over the last two days in December last year, nearly 30 tornadoes caused great damage across six states——from Arkansas in the south to Illinois in the Midwest. More than 100 tornado warnings were issued——the most ever for a day. The tornado in Kentucky caused at least 50 people’s deaths, which was described as the worst in this state’s history.

As one of the largest countries in the world, the United States is also one of the most geographically various countries-from deserts to forests to miles of coast line. While this comes with many advantages, it unfortunately leaves the country easily damaged by all kinds of natural disasters.

Different parts of the United States face different types of natural disasters. The west coast is at risk of wildfires, earthquakes, and even volcanic eruptions. The southern part of the country is frequently hit by tornadoes, and the east coast faces the threat of serious hurricanes every year. Midwestern areas near rivers are often flooded by huge floods, and these are the worst floods in American history.

The governments reviewed the weather event in each state’s history that caused the highest number of deaths to determine the worst natural disaster in every state. Thanks to their location and geographic research, some states could prepare ahead of time to avoid mass-casualty(重大伤亡的)weather events.

However, many other parts of the country have been less fortunate, experiencing massive storms and floods. Many such events, like the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston of Texas, killed so many people that it was impossible to get an exact number of final deaths, especially during that time.

American weather continues to become more changeable. In 2018, there were 14 weather events that caused over $1 billion in damage. And in many parts of the country, these weather events could become even more destructive(毁灭性的)because of global warming.