The Watchers Staff covers earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather, space weather and other natural events. Published since 2011, The Watchers reports on a changing planet and the science behind it.

  • In 1920, a man out hunting on a farm in Namibia sat down on a strange black rock, scratched it with his knife and saw metal shine underneath. It was Hoba, a 60-ton meteorite, the largest ever found, and there is no crater around it

    ByThe Watchers Staff

    A hunter near Grootfontein sat on a black rock in white limestone. His knife, a chisel, a company manager and his wife’s digging revealed the largest intact meteorite known.

  • On December 26, 2004, a 10-year-old British girl on a Phuket beach recognized the frothing sea from a recent geography lesson, and her warning helped clear the beach before the tsunami struck

    ByThe Watchers Staff

    After a classroom video about a 1946 tsunami, Tilly Smith saw the same white froth on Mai Khao Beach. The minutes that followed depended on whether the adults around her would listen.

  • The largest iceberg on Earth, more than twice the size of Greater London, broke off Antarctica in 1986 and sat stuck to the seabed for over 30 years, and when it finally floated free, it got caught above an undersea mountain and spent months spinning slowly on the spot

    ByRishav Kothari and The Watchers Staff

    Iceberg A23a, the world’s largest freely floating iceberg through much of 2025, spent about 34 years pinned to the Weddell Sea floor, completed roughly 15 rotations above an undersea mountain in 2024, grounded again near South Georgia and finally collapsed in March 2026—months short of its 40th anniversary.