Browse the NewsHour's complete coverage of weather . This bad year in weather and to Phil Ponce. Mother Nature reeked havoc across the globe in 1998.
Many experts call it one of the worst years ever for weather disasters.
Early this spring in Indonesia and Malaysia, severe drought and dry, thinning rain forests called wildfires to spread. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forests were blackened by the blaze and smoke covered the countryside, prompting thousands of people to seek treatment for respiratory infections. In Western India last June a cyclone swept a half dozen villages in the western state of Gujarat into the sea. More than a thousand people were killed. Winds up to 65 miles per hour destroyed homes and cut communication lines.