1938 natural disasters

The Los Angeles flood of 1938 was one of the largest floods in the history of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties in southern California. The flood was caused by two Pacific storms that swept across the Los Angeles Basin in February-March 1938 and generated almost one year's worth of precipitation in just a few days. Between 113–115 people were killed by the flooding. The Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana Rivers burst their banks, inundating much of the coastal plain, the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, and the Inland Empire. Flood control structures spared parts of Los Angeles County from destruction, while Orange and Riverside Counties experienced more damage.

The 1938 Yellow River flood (simplified Chinese: 花园口决堤事件; traditional Chinese: 花園口決堤事件; pinyin: Huāyuánkǒu Juédī Shìjiàn; 'Huayuankou Dam Burst Incident') was a man-made flood from June 1938 to January 1947 created by the intentional destruction of levees on the Yellow River in Huayuankou, Henan by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The first wave of floods hit Zhongmu County on 13 June 1938.

The 1938 Atlantic hurricane season produced fifteen tropical cyclones, of which nine strengthened into tropical storms. Four storms intensified into hurricanes. Two of those four became major hurricanes, the equivalent of a Category 3 or greater storm on the modern day Saffir–Simpson scale. The hurricane season officially began on June 16 and ended on November 15. In 2012, as part of the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project, meteorologists identified a previously undocumented January hurricane and September tropical storm while fine-tuning the meteorological histories of several others. However, given scant observations from ships and weather stations, significant uncertainty of tropical cyclone tracks, intensity, and duration remains, particularly for those storms that stayed at sea.

A flash flood on the Waiau Stream at Kopuawhara in New Zealand on 19 February 1938 destroyed a railway construction workers camp killing 20 men and one woman, Martha Quinn.

The 25–26 January 1938 geomagnetic storm (also titled the Fátima Storm) was a massive solar storm which occurred 16–26 January with peak activity on 22, 25, and 26 January and was part of the 17th solar cycle. As the electrification of Europe and North America was still in its infancy, the light storm could be seen brilliantly. The intensely bright arches of crimson light with shifting spectrum of green, blue-white, and red radiated from a brilliant auroral crown near the zenith instead of appearing as usual in parallel lines. This aurora is believed by many people, especially those of the Catholic faith, to be related to the Fátima Prophecies (explained below).