On the heels of the disastrous Myanmar cyclone ten days ago, nature has had a busy week — with more human tragedy as a consequence.

We awoke this morning to reports of a massive quake near a Chinese city most Westerners have never heard of.    Sichuan Province may be better known to Americans as the home of the giant pandas, and for the region’s spicy cuisine.  But Chengdu, obscure to most of us over here, has a metro area larger than any in the U.S. except for New York and Los Angeles. 

At CNN, our first info on a quake anywhere in the world often comes from an automatic email warning system from the U.S. Geological Survey    The 7.8 quake, post-midnight on the East Coast but mid-afternoon in Sichuan Province, China, has a reported death toll in the thousands.   There have been several aftershocks, the largest in the 5 and 6 range on the intensity scale.  The main quake was felt over thousands of miles.

Numerically tame by comparison but just as tragic to those affected were this weekend’s tornadoes.  At least 22 Americans died in the Midwest and Southeast.  A relatively small twister ripped up some homes about ten miles from my own house in Ellenwood, Georgia.  Things were much worse in the midwest, where a storm estimated in the EF3 or EF4 range tore through a wide swath of lead-mining country in northeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Missouri.   The National Weather Service has counted 66 tornadoes over the weekend, and the one that ravaged Picher, Oklahoma stayed on the ground for 63 miles.  2008 is well ahead of pace for both the number of tornadoes (over 500), and the death toll they’ve produced — now 98 for the year.

Had enough?   Heavy rains combined with high tides to force evacuations along the Delaware coast.   On Sunday high winds and low humidity conspired to spark large, sudden wildfires along Florida’s East Coast, temporarily closing Interstate 95.

We cover all of this stuff through CNN’s domestic and international weather center.   One of our summer interns is starting her first day.  It will be a learning experience.

Peter Dykstra  Executive Producer   CNN Science, Tech, and Weather

In North America, we have tornadoes — a nearly unheard-of weather phenomenon in much of the rest of the world. Last week, CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano and Producer Marsha Walton reported on them here, reminding us why the rest of the world should be grateful. One year ago last weekend, the mile-wide town of Greensburg, Kansas was obliterated by a mile and a half wide tornado.

An Aqua satellite image of a dust storm in Taklimakan Desert, Western China. Source: NASA

But there are some things that the rest of the world gets that most of us in North America never see. It’s sandstorm season in the Middle East. This week, a blustery weather system — common for April — caused problems from the Mediterranean to Kazakhstan, and just about everywhere in between.

NASA’s MODIS website features a remarkable gallery of near-real-time satellite photography from the agency’s AQUA and TERRA satellites. On Wednesday, each pass of the two satellites over the normally cloud-free Middle East and North Africa showed a parade of dust plumes — blowing sand moving away from the arid region.

Here are the best of the images:

A dust storm in Kazakhstan, blowing eastward over the Aral Sea;

A Gulf of Aden dust storm;

Persian Gulf ( at the bottom of frame);

The lower Red sea and Gulf of Aden;

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Persian Gulf (at the top of the frame);

Saharan sand blowing into the Mediterranean off of Libya.

Another image from China, taken on April 26, shows another of the world’s dust storm hot spots: The Gobi Desert. Expanding due to drought and poor farming practices, the Gobi routinely blows dust into the populated areas of Eastern China, and offshore — some of it reaching North America, accompanied by China’s legendary air pollution.

Dust or sand storms can impact aircraft — weather forecasters pay special attention to that. Commercial and military aircraft can incur a double risk from the storms — both visibility and engines can be affected. And it may be stating the obvious, but trying to live and breathe in a cloud of micro-particles can have a major respiratory impact for people as well.

If you’re really, really eager to see an American-made dust storm, they’re most common in the Southwest in mid-summer. Meteorologists call it a haboob, a name borrowed from the Sahara. They’re intense, fast-forming storms caused by a downdraft of high winds. Last July, a haboob brought traffic in Phoenix to a standstill with 50 mile-an-hour winds. The National Weather Service reported a dramatic temperature drop of 18 degrees in less than an hour. Since we’re talking about Arizona in July, that means it dropped to 91 degrees.

–Peter Dykstra Executive Producer CNN Sci-Tech & Weather

Last night, we made 4 miles of progress in an hour trying to get to Defiance, Ohio, a town in the NW corner of a state inundated by flooding.

It was bad in Defiance and worse this morning. The problem last night was we kept getting turned around because of high water. Several road blocks kept us from completing the 160 mile drive from Cincinnati.

We were tired, hungry, and it was getting late. And with another 330 a.m. wake up call today, we still had 20 water-dodging miles to go.

We didn’t expect to be on our way to a flood zone. Just hours before we were 500 miles south of here in area hammered by another natural disaster. LIVE from Moulton, Alabama, yesterday morning, we were reporting on the severe tornadoes that ripped across the mid south.

More than 50 people died and hundreds more lost their homes. Detaching emotionally from a story of that magnitude is nearly impossible. Speaking with grief-stricken families is the most difficult part of covering the story.

Another key component is reporting on the science behind the storms. NWS surveyors tell us the tornado near Moulton was rated an EF4, it was over ¼ mile wide with winds over 170mph.

Since we didn’t pack for flood coverage, we’ll be shopping for hip-waders in Defiance. Afterwards, we’ll get about 2 hours sleep before the wake-up call.

It reminds us of the funniest quote of our trip regarding fatigue, sitting in Burger King as when we got the call to move to Ohio. Alex declared with a smile, “Just think, you’ll feel just like this tomorrow… but worse.”

Check out the flood conditions at our location.

– CNN’s Rob Marciano and Alex Walker

Yesterday, CNN was fully focused on the biggest day of the Presidential Primary season, with all-out coverage from 24 states, when another drama quickly unfolded, bringing tragedy to six U.S. states.  

In the midst of the Best Political Team on Television was meteorologist Chad Myers, bringing in rapid-fire reports of tornadoes — North of Little Rock, on the southern outskirts of Memphis, in Kentucky; Jackson, Tennessee; and more.

As rescue crews poke through the wreckage, the final death toll still isn’t in.  CNN crews that were hustling on Super Tuesday coverage yesterday have already changed gears to covering the aftermath.  There’s also a “slight” risk of strong storms and tornadoes today as the storm system moves east, with the area of greatest risk covering much of the state of Virginia.

Yesterday, CNN’s weather team followed the advisories from the Storm Prediction Center, citing a “high” risk of severe weather centered around Arkansas and Western Tennessee.  Mid-afternoon, the SPC extended the high risk zone almost all the way up to Indianapolis.  “High” risk days generally only happen five or six times a year, according to CNN Weather Producer Sean Morris.  And rarely do they happen in early February.

But virtually no area of the U.S. — or any part of the calendar year — is absolutely tornado-proof.  In 2007, a weak tornado became the first ever recorded in Brooklyn.  Alaska has a tornado history, but not a very long one.

A website called The Tornado Project has an amazing list of every reported tornado to hit the U.S., broken down county-by-county, since 1950.  Check it out.

Covering the ruin and misery in the wake of a tornado isn’t any fun, but it’s essential to what we do here.  Even in an awful story like this one, there’s a moment where we can feel good about our jobs.  When a political leader starts a sentence with the words “The news media….” we’ve come to expect that we’re in for some criticism.  But this morning on CNN, Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said “The news media saved lives” by getting out the word about severe storms.  Better forecasting, intense media coverage of weather, and the advent of home “Weather Alert” radios are three reasons that deaths from tornadoes are way down in recent years.

– Peter Dykstra, executive producer,  CNN Sci-Tech (and Weather, too)