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Do you feel like the USA has a much greater variety and intensity of extreme weather compared to your country? I have been reading a book about European colonists' accounts of their first days in America. A common theme that runs through many of the stories is the bewilderment about the extreme and unpredictable weather in this new land.
I can only imagine the pilgrims being blindsided by their first winter in America. Coming from the UK, where winter weather is incredibly mild considering its latitude, they probably thought their destination would be even warmer since it was farther south. They were really caught off guard.
What other countries can experience blizzards, heat waves, torrential downpours, hurricanes, droughts and flooding at a similar frequency found in the US? If you have visited or moved here, is this something you noticed?
Consider that you have the southern part of the Country, Hainan, which is tropical, all the way up to Mt. Everest, which straddles the Chinese border, to the Gobi desert, which is super dry and both really hot and cold, to areas of the far north, which essentially are in Siberia, to everything in between.
Well, it depends on what you mean with 'extreme', but considering the points you take into account, I guess that the US (or North America as a whole) indeed gets the 'most extreme weather on average', even though it's really hard, if not impossible, do a real quantification.
To add another extreme weather event, US also gets most tornadoes.
China and to a lesser extent Argentina have an enormous climate diversity, but not necessarily 'extreme' in the way the OP intends.
Argentina is pretty much a mild version of the US when it comes to weather. They share many traits.
Though one thing North America lacks in the extreme department is hypercontinental climates. The most continental climate in the USA has an average anual range (jul avg - jan avg) about 50°F narrower than that of the most continental climate in Asia.
From a western european point of view, yeah, it might seem more extreme because for all the episodes of extreme weather we might get, you seem to get them more frequently and with more intensity, although this would not apply to the west coast.
Or maybe the news just want to emphasize the most sensational aspects of extreme weather in foreign countries.
This whole "no East-West mountains allowing for the clash between two air-masses, making for very extreme weather" applies to the US only in the Great Plains, and the Mid South to a lesser extent. The rest of the country has nice, stable, and inviting weather, and is not affected by such geography, unlike what people here like to believe. This is especially true for Hawaii, the Southwest, and the Coastal South.
This whole "no East-West mountains allowing for the clash between two air-masses, making for very extreme weather" applies to the US only in the Great Plains, and the Mid South to a lesser extent. The rest of the country has nice, stable, and inviting weather, and is not affected by such geography, unlike what people here like to believe. This is especially true for Hawaii, the Southwest, and the Coastal South.
Hawaii, the Pacific Coast, and lower elevation areas of the Southwest do tend to have stable weather, though this isn't true for the coastal South. It is affected by the same air masses as the inland South, just slightly moderated by the sea. The Midwest and Northeast are no more stable.
Better question is how much knowledge or data do we have from other countries regarding extremes? So do we really know the answer? But yes.. China. Japan. Russia. Ukraine. Argentina. Australia. South Africa all do. One event more than the other but they all experience that.
Love how they grab the public's attention ...is that what draws us to tv shows?
"This wild, varied and extreme weather provides a dramatic backdrop for a new, seven-part Discovery Channel series, North America, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. According to Discovery, the series "will reveal the intimate stories of animals struggling to survive in unforgiving weather and rugged terrain."
Oh wait... there's more...
"What remains to be seen," Henson says, "is how the USA's wildlife will adapt not to a single weather event but to a sustained change in climate, as our warming trend continues and both drought and heavy rains become more intense"
They did the Hook, Reel, & Catch thing.
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