- Mother Nature can be a little temperamental,
sorry, it's 2019, Father Nature, could be either.
Have you ever had it rain really hard where you live?
Maybe there was flooding, or maybe lightning hit a tree.
You know the power of nature,
but there have been times in the past
where an act of nature was so powerful
it literally changed the world forever.
(playful music)
Here are 10 Times Acts of Nature
Completely Changed the World.
Number 10 is the Chilean earthquake.
In the afternoon of February 27th, 2010,
an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8
hit the country of Chile, lasting nearly three minutes
and creating a massive tsunami with its tremors.
The damage, which was estimated to have cost
between four and seven billion dollars, was catastrophic,
with over 370,000 homes damaged,
many of which were completely destroyed.
It wasn't until years later that the true changes
that the Chilean earthquake caused became clear.
It turns out that it actually moved entire cities,
some of which by as much as three meters.
But that was not the only shocking discovery.
According to NASA, the earthquake managed to shift
the entire planet on its axis by nearly eight centimeters,
therefore shortening the length
of one day by 1.26 milliseconds.
Mm-hmm, and y'all thought you didn't have enough time
to get things done in a day as is.
Number nine is Lake Canyon Gorge.
In July of 2002, a much higher than usual
amount of rain raised the levels of the Guadalupe River,
creating a flash flood that put some of the spillways
in Como County, Texas to the test.
Ultimately, the flood waters managed to breach the dams.
It did major damage to around 48,000 homes
before going on to change the local landscape forever.
In less than a week, the water managed to actually
etch a large canyon into the bedrock.
Dubbed the Lake Canyon Gorge, the carved space
is 1.6 kilometers long and as deep as 15 meters.
The flood even removed sediment,
exposing limestone, new rocks, fossils,
and even at least one set of dinosaur footprints.
In the aftermath, a new ecosystem formed in the gorge,
with fish and other wildlife moving in
to the pools left behind.
But like, what kind of dinosaur footprint did they find,
the Baldo Raptorus? (screeches)
Number eight is Hurricane Harvey.
Tied with Hurricane Katrina as the world's most costly
tropical cyclones, Hurricane Harvey formed
over the Caribbean Sea east of the Lesser Antilles Islands
on August 17th, 2017.
It ravaged the islands of Barbados and St. Vincent
before making landfall in Texas.
The storm caused over 125 billion dollars in damage
through high winds and severe flooding from the
over 94 trillion liters of water that it rained down.
The colossal amounts of seawater being added to the land
crushed it, literally pushing the earth's surface down
in the area, and this in turn actually altered
the planet's gravitational equilibrium.
Literally, some islands in a part of the United States
sank a bit all because of rain water.
Number seven is the Great Kanto Quake.
On September first, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake
shook the island of Japan.
It did so much damage to Tokyo, the country's capital,
that plans to make another city the capital was discussed.
Incredibly, as the media stepped in to report on the event,
multiple outlets began printing false rumors
created during the confusion.
The biggest was that Korean people were taking advantage
of the chaos, burning down any buildings left standing,
robbing people, and even trying to poison them.
Because of this, angry mobs formed targeting Koreans,
though many of the victims were of Chinese descent
and were simply mistaken for being Korean.
The positive out of this is that since then,
accurate reporting has been enforced.
Yup, definitely something we need in America.
Number six is the Shaanxi earthquake.
Considered one of the most devastating earthquakes
in recorded history, the Shaanxi quake devastated
the Chinese province of Shaanxi on the morning
of January 23rd, 1556.
Estimated to have been a magnitude 8,
the earthquake utterly destroyed an area
of over 840 kilometers, wiping out buildings,
cave structures, and pretty much anything
else touching the ground.
Those who survived found the land
around them completely changed.
Though it only lasted a few seconds,
the quake caused a number of massive floods and fires,
and actually managed to tear down mountains
and formed a few new ones, and even redirect rivers
that existed for centuries.
The quake almost couldn't have changed the landscape
any more than it did.
Number five is the Great Blizzard of 1888.
On March 11th, 1888, one of the worst blizzards
the United States had ever experienced hit,
and the event changed the city of New York forever.
Called the Great Blizzard of 1888,
the storm crippled the entire northeast,
dumping over a meter of snow in various places.
For several days, people were stuck or stranded,
many without phones, water, or gas,
and unable to escape in their cars or the trains,
while city workers struggled to clear it all.
When Spring finally came, the city of New York
decided to put their water, gas, telegraph,
and telephone lines underground to spare them
from being frozen or damaged.
Also to ensure the transportation
nightmare didn't happen again,
the now world-famous subway system was developed,
changing how New Yorkers got around to this day.
Still, it gets a little weird in the subway. (chuckles)
I can tell you in LA, there's some characters in there.
Number four is the El Nino weather pattern.
The Earth is not actually a perfect sphere,
it's actually elongated and it isn't even
the same shape that it used to be.
In 2005, a team of researchers at the University of Texas
discovered that over the previous 28 years,
the planet's shape had be affected by an annual,
naturally-occurring climate event called El Nino.
During El Nino, the temperature of the surface
of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean rises,
causing high air surface pressure
and unpredictable weather conditions.
The climate shift moves the water contained in the oceans,
continents, and atmosphere, which in turn
shifts the Earth's gravity field.
Two specific events, the first occurring between
1986 and 1991, and the second between 1996 and 2002,
were shown to have bulged the planet at the equator,
and flattened it slightly at its poles, changing its shape.
Number three is the year without a summer.
On April 10th, 1815, one of the most powerful
volcanic eruptions in recorded history occurred
on the island of Sumawa in Indonesia.
This is when Mount Tambora exploded,
sending over 10 tons of rock and magma in every direction.
This resulted in the obliteration of the town of Tambora,
and rocked southeast Asia,
but what came next changed history.
After the biggest explosion, a massive amount of ash
flew up from the volcano and into the sky,
forming a humongous cloud that traveled around the world,
blocking out the sun as it went.
This actually managed to reduce the global temperature
significantly, causing a number of weather distortions
and even caused famines throughout the next year,
leading many to call 1816 a year without a summer.
Number two is the Galveston hurricane.
Considered one of the most intense natural disasters
the United States has ever seen,
the Galveston hurricane made landfall
on September 8th, 1900, and absolutely demolished
the island city of Galveston, Texas.
The Category 4 hurricane was so powerful
houses were torn from their foundations and hurled about.
More than 3,600 such buildings were destroyed
by the 217 kilometer an hour winds.
That number should have been much smaller,
but because of the bafflingly wrong predictions
and the quite frankly idiocy of the director
of the weather bureau in Washington
who cut off incoming intel from Cuba,
where the storm was sighted,
people were completely unprepared for it.
However, this unfortunate event did bring positives,
specifically advances in predicting
and communicating such storms.
And number one is the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
On March 11th, 2011, the most powerful
earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history
shook the island country.
After the ground stopped shaking,
a tsunami with waves higher than 40 meters
flooded the city of Miyako, and three nuclear reactors
experienced level seven meltdowns,
causing even more destruction.
As the costliest disaster in Earth's history,
it's been estimated that the economic cost
was nearly $235 billion US.
In the aftermath, it was discovered that the main island
of Japan, Honshu, had actually been pushed
eastward by 2.4 meters.
On top of that, the quake managed to shift
the Earth's axis by as much as 25 centimeters.
Talk about a world-changing event.
(playful music) (wind whistling)