The little city of Yuma in southwest Arizona is officially the world’s sunniest place, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Yuma gets more than 4,000 sunlight hours per year and has an average of 11 sunny hours per day. Its average yearly rainfall is 7.8 inches (20cm), while it averages daily highs of 41°C (106°F) in July. Another Arizona city, Phoenix, comes in as the second sunniest with an average of 3,872 sunlight hours per year. 

The highest-ever recorded temperature (56.7ºC/134.1ºF) occurred on 10 July 1913 in Furnace Creek Ranch, California in the Death Valley desert. However, the record has never been recognised officially due to possible problems with the accuracy of the reading. It's difficult to calculate and record such measurements as air temperature changes in the shade, while ground temperatures can exceed air temperatures by as much as 50ºC (122ºF). Strangely, 1913 also saw Death Valley's coldest temperature – the mercury plummeted to -10°C (15°F) at Furnace Creek on 8 January.

The desert valley followed this scorching temperature up in August 2020 when once again one of the highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth was taken here – 54.4ºC (130ºF). Known as the hottest and driest place in North America, the valley's shape (a long, narrow basin walled by high, steep mountain ranges) is the reason it experiences such extreme summer heat. Heat radiates from the rocks and soil and becomes trapped in the valley. 

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The town of Unionville in Maryland got a record-breaking drenching on 4 July 1956 when 1.23 inches (3.12cm) of rain fell in just one minute. According to the World Meteorological Organization, it is the most rainfall to ever fall in one minute and be reliably recorded to date.

The city of Syracuse in New York receives an average 127.8 inches (325cm) of snow each winter, making it officially the snowiest city in America. The next snowiest is also in the state of New York: Rochester, which gets an average of 102 inches (259cm) of the white stuff each winter. Both cities are in a region impacted by so-called lake effect snow, which occurs when cold air moves across the open and relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes causing clouds to form in narrow bands. These clouds can produce as much as two to three inches (5-7cm) of snow per hour.

The US experienced some of its lowest ever temperatures in February 1899 when a cold weather front now known as the Great Arctic Outbreak swept across the country. Fort Logan in Montana hit an extraordinarily low temperature of -51°C (61°F) and even Florida shivered as temperatures fell to the all-time state record low of -18°C (-2°F) in Tallahassee. Ice was seen flowing down the Mississippi River, past New Orleans and out into the Gulf of Mexico with a one-inch-thick layer forming at its mouth in Garden Island Bay.

As an Arctic air mass overtook much of the nation, temperatures plunged to historic lows in places including Washington DC, in what was the coldest February for 30 years according to scientists at NOAA. Texas was among the worst affected by the extreme winter snap with several locations recording their longest streak of below-freezing temperatures ever and experiencing major power outages. For the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma it was in the 10 coldest Februarys on record.

Most of the world’s tornadoes occur in the US and usually take place between April and June, with an average of 1,333 tornadoes per year. These powerful storms mostly result from supercell thunderstorms. Although tornadoes have been recorded in every US state, you're most likely to see one in Texas. Typically experiencing 151 tornadoes a year, the state has also experienced some of the worst in recorded history.

From 1887 up until 1950, American weather forecasters were forbidden from attempting to predict tornadoes. According to an article by the Storm Prediction Center, the use of the word 'tornado' in forecasts was "strongly discouraged and at other times forbidden" due to concerns it would lead to mass panic. Very little was known about these weather systems, which made predicting them hard. They were seen as "mysterious menaces of unfathomable power, fast-striking monsters from the sky capable of sudden and unpredictable acts of death and devastation", according to the report. The Weather Bureau revoked the ban in 1950.

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Though 1,333 tornadoes happen every year in the US, there is typically only one every 20 years in Alaska, while most states in the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast and the Great Basin tend to have less than 10 twisters annually. Massachusetts rarely gets tornadoes, but in July 2019 Cape Cod was walloped with three separate twisters with wind speeds up to 110 miles per hour (177km/h). Prior to this only three tornadoes had ever been recorded on the state's pretty peninsula.

The tornado that struck El Reno in Oklahoma on 31 May 2013 was the widest storm system ever recorded in the US, at 2.6 miles (4.2km) across. The twister measured a level 5 on the EF scale, which measures tornadoes on wind speed and related damage, with 0 featuring winds of 65-85 miles per hour (105-137km/h) and 5 featuring winds over 200 miles per hour (322km/h). Sadly, the monstrous weather system, a multiple-vortex tornado, killed three of the country’s leading storm chasers who were following its course.

After an EF-5 tornado tore through the southern Kansas town of Greensburg in 2007 and caused near-total destruction, the community refused to be cowed. Residents of the farming town banded together and rebuilt it as a model green community using renewable energy. Today Greensburg is the only US town that requires all city-owned buildings to meet the US Green Building Council's LEED Platinum standards, and all street lights are LED. A 12.5MW wind farm was built on the town’s outskirts, which generates three times more power than the town uses.

There was plenty of extreme weather recorded across the country in 2022, and tornadoes certainly did their part. The month of March saw a whopping 233 reported tornadoes, setting the record for the highest ever number in that month. Seen here is the neighbourhood of Arabi, New Orleans, which was ravaged by an EF-3 twister on the evening of 22 March.

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The National Weather Service issued a warning in January 2020 that frozen iguanas could shower the streets and green spaces of south Florida as temperatures dropped to lower than usual levels. Once temperatures sink to around 4°C (40°F) cold-blooded iguanas become immobilised, lose their grip and slip from trees. While the chilled critters may appear lifeless, they’re not actually dead.

With more than 30 inches (76cm) of rain falling in just a few days in southeastern Texas, the National Weather Service had to update its rain accumulation map with a new colour (lavender) to effectively display the graphics. On 27 August 2017, Houston alone received 16.07 inches (40.8cm) of rain, making it the wettest day in the city's history.

Moonbows or lunar rainbows are the work of moonlight rather than sunlight. They're far rarer, fainter and smaller than their daytime counterparts. The perfect conditions to see a moonbow are during a full moon – either two to three hours after sunset or before sunrise – and you're more likely to see one near a waterfall. Yosemite National Park, California (pictured) and Cumberland Falls, Kentucky are two top places to see them in the US.

A whirling column of air and water mist, waterspouts are most commonly sighted along the Florida Keys and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. They typically form during the late spring and summer months and are classified as either fair weather waterspouts or tornadic waterspouts. September is the peak month for waterspout activity over the Great Lakes: the region had its largest outbreak ever in 2020 with 232 waterspouts recorded in just one week between 28 September and 4 October.

It's a rare and mesmerising sight: sometimes the vast opening of the Grand Canyon is completely obscured as thick, billowing fog laps at its rims like white waves. This ocean of fog occurs when a layer of warm air hits a layer of cold air, trapping clouds beneath. Known as a partial or full cloud inversion, the weather event is more likely to happen in late autumn or early winter.

The powerful storm that hit Miami in 1992 wrought mass devastation on Florida and sadly continues to do so. Many exotic wildlife facilities were damaged during the storm, including a python breeding facility. It's thought that possibly thousands of Burmese pythons, one of the world’s largest snakes, escaped into the nearby swamps. This invasive species, which has no natural predator and is a prolific breeder, has devastated the mammal populations of the Everglades and is severely threatening its biodiversity.

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A storm that battered the town of Vivian in South Dakota in July 2010 notched the record for the largest hailstone ever to be recorded in the US. The whopping item, known as a hail bomb, measured eight inches (45.7cm) in diameter, 18.6 inches (47.3cm) in circumference and weighed almost two pounds (879g).

We have one man's life-long passion to thank for the mind-blowing fact that every falling snowflake has its own unique design. At the age of just 19, Jericho-based 19th-century farmer Wilson A Bentley pioneered the technique of photomicrography, through which he captured the one-off fragile forms of snowflakes. He photographed 5,000 of them in his lifetime.

When subtropical Storm Theta developed in November 2020, it broke the single-season record for the most named storms in the northeast Atlantic, beating the 2005 hurricane season. It was the 29th named storm and by the end of the season there were 30, including 12 that made landfall. The previous record was nine landfalls in 1916, while a normal season sees an average of 12 named storms. Five of 2020's powerful storms came ashore in Louisiana.

California sweltered in extreme heat in the summer of 2020, and experienced its worst wildfire crisis on record as fires swept through millions of acres of land across the state, as well as in Oregon and other parts of the west. An unusual lightning storm in August was partly to blame, sparking dozens of smaller fires that merged into an almighty blaze. More than 4.2 million acres burned, and the largest fire tore through an area larger than Rhode Island on its own.

World-famous furry weather forecaster Phil appears in front of the crowds at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every 2 February. According to tradition, if the groundhog emerges from his burrow and casts a shadow the country will see six more weeks of winter weather, and if there is no shadow spring will arrive early. But is the rodent right? Phil has got it right around 40% of the time over the last 10 years, according to the NOAA. 

Mount Washington held the world record for the fastest wind gust ever recorded – a wind speed of 231 miles per hour (372km/h) logged by Mount Washington Observatory staff on 12 April 1934 – until 1996. The New Hampshire observatory was beaten by a powerful gust Down Under when an unmanned station on Barrow Island, Australia recorded 253 miles per hour (407km/h) during Tropical Cyclone Olivia. Mount Washington still holds the record for the US.

'Lightning doesn’t strike twice' is an oft-repeated myth as repeat lightning strikes are highly likely, and the Empire State Building is struck on average 23 times a year. In 2022, the US recorded 19 deaths by lightning strike. June, July and August are peak months for lightning activity across the country, with the most strikes occurring in Florida and Texas.

Tamarack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains holds the record for the most snow in a calendar month – it received 32-and-a-half feet (10m) in January 1911. It also had the greatest snow depth ever measured – a whopping 37-and-a-half feet (11.4m) was recorded on the mountain on 11 March 1911.

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California's Sierra Nevada mountains are as pretty as a picture in winter, but so too later in the year when the snow can turn a striking shade of pink. This bizarre phenomenon, sometimes known as watermelon snow, is caused by algae. Although usually green, when the weather warms up and the snow starts to melt the algae releases a red pigment to protect itself from heat and UV radiation. Pink snow also occurs in Colorado’s alpine mountains.

In April 2020, a massive lightning bolt stretched 477.2 miles (768km) across the sky over the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. According to the Guinness World Records, the megaflash, with a length equivalent to the distance between New York City and Columbus, Ohio, is the longest single flash ever recorded, breaking the previous world record set in Brazil in 2018 of 440.6 miles (709km). It was confirmed in February 2022.

Ushering in the new year in very wet fashion, San Francisco received an enormous 5.46 inches (13.87cm) of rainfall downtown on New Year's Eve – more than 25% of the city's average yearly total. Perhaps surprisingly, it was only the second rainiest day ever seen in the city, not quite surpassing the record from November 1994 which was 0.08 inches (0.2cm) higher.

In late-May 2022 swathes of America were hit by a historic spring heatwave, with temperatures 20 to 30°F above average in the mid-Atlantic and northeast. It’s estimated that more than 120 million Americans were affected by the record-breaking heat, with the National Weather Service warning citizens to stay hydrated and take breaks indoors. 

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