From sandstorms to bomb cyclones, here are the most dramatic weather events in recent memory.
Mother Nature isn't kidding around.
Videos taken from around the world show some of the wildest weather events in recent memory — from a monster sandstorm that stretched for miles to a "bomb cyclone" that left even Florida under a blanket of snow.
Footage from September 2017 shows sudden heavy rain as a storm unexpectedly battered a beach in Santa Barbara, California. Hurricane force winds sent umbrellas and other objects into the air while families ran for cover.
"Holy moly!" said Leonard Diaz, who filmed the sudden event.
"It was super intense," he later told Inside Edition. "You’re seeing all this debris and beach chairs and umbrellas flying, people don’t know where to run, where to go, what to do. You’re trying to duck for cover, but the thing that’s covering you, an umbrella, is all of a sudden gone."
The storm was a microburst, a powerful, localized downdraft. It lasted just two minutes but caused serious damage, including downed trees.
Another terrifying weather experience was caught on camera in Colorado in May 2017, when huge chunks of hail forced a family to hide out in their car.
The hail was so forceful, it cracked the vehicle's windshield in several places while mother-of-four Stephanie Vandewalker tried her best to comfort her frightened children.
But Mother Nature was just getting started. In January 2018, the East Coast was pummeled by a "bomb cyclone," which dumped snow from Florida to Maine.
Footage from the Sunshine State showed children seeing snow for the first time, while in Baltimore, Maryland, a car was seen entombed in ice.
It wasn't just the U.S. that had a particularly frigid winter. Thousands of miles away, a snow tornado swept through the Austrian village of Stall.
Another storm captured in Egypt earlier this year was actually made from sand — also known as a "haboob." It reduced visibility across hundreds of square miles and forced highways to close across the country.
But the haboob’s winds had nothing on what scientists saw at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire in November 2017.
When wind speeds there reached a mind-boggling 109 miles per hour, researcher Tom Padham decided to take a stroll in the gust. He didn’t get very far.
"There’s this trick that we tried to do in the past, but wind typically isn’t strong enough, it’s where you essentially sit down in an invisible chair and luckily it was strong enough to actually work," he told Inside Edition after his video went viral.
Watch the video above to see these freaky weather events.
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