There has been a significant rise in the number of hurricanes since Hijri 1400, or 1980 AD, the year of the coming of Hazrat Mahdi (as). This is one of the signs foretold by our Prophet (saas) in great details hundreds of years before our day and is one of the proofs that have come about one after the other in our time, just as set out in the hadiths.
“Doomsday will not take place until 10 portents are seen. The tenth is a storm that will hurl people into the sea...” (Al-Barzanji, Al-Isha'ah li-ashrat al-sa'ah, p. 288)
- In 1992, Hurricane Andrew cost the lives of 40,000 people and left 250,000 homeless.
- Approximately 500 to 1,000 people were killed by the storms that hit western Bangladesh on 13 May 1996. A further 30,000 people were injured and 100,000 people lost their homes.
- More than 9,000 people died during Hurricane Mitch in October 1998. A further 15,000 people disappeared and a total of 2.3 million were affected by the hurricane in some way.
- Hurricane Katrina that struck in August 2005 devastated 8 towns in Mississippi; 80% of New Orleans was destroyed and some 2,000 people lost their lives. The hurricane caused damage to the tune of some $100 billion. The number of people missing was put at 35,000, and hundreds of thousands of buildings were made uninhabitable, while hundreds of thousands more suffered severe damage.
"What becomes of you when death meets people and homes become graves?" (MukhtasarTazkirah al-Qurtubi, p. 392, no. 726)
- One striking feature of this hurricane was that New Orleans was almost entirely flooded when the walls built to protect it from floods collapsed. This is a manifestation of the "storm that will cast people into the sea" described in the hadith.
- Hurricane Sidr that struck Bangladesh in November 2007, blowing at a speed of 250 km an hour, ended in the loss of 3,200 lives and terrible destruction.Waves up to 6 meters high causedby the hurricane demolished thousands of homesand led to the disappearance of some 1,000 people. The hurricane affected 5 million people and is regarded as one of the worst disasters of the century.
- Hundreds of thousands of people disappeared during Hurricane Nargis that struck Myanmar in 2008. The death toll rose to 10,000.
- Hundreds of people died in Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan in 2009, while the cost of the devastation caused by the storm was put at $267 million.
- Hurricane Ketsana devastated South Asian countries in 2009.
“Doomsday will not take place until 10 portents are seen. The tenth is a storm that will hurl people into the sea...” (Al-Barzanji, Al-Isha'ah li-ashrat al-sa'ah, p. 288)
