A handout photograph made available by the British Ministry of Defence shows the air around the British military base, Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, eerily still as a tidal wave of sand and dust approaches from the west on 16 May 2014. With the sand came a strong cold wind which significantly lowered the temperature and completely blocked out the sun, as well as causing havoc by relocating things that were secured to the floor. Vehicles had to switch on lights and doors and windows were rapidly closed by anyone who was lucky enough to see the storm coming. Within an hour the worst of the storm had passed and a sense of normality returned to the camp.

People wait for evacuation in front of their flooded house in the town of Obrenovac, 40 kilometers west of Belgrade. Large swaths of the country are still affected by the deadly floods across Bosnia and Serbia at the weekend which claimed at least 14 lives and led to the evacuation of 15,000 people after the Balkans suffered its heaviest rainfall in a century.

Larry Loving tosses a board on a tarp that covers some of his possessions in front of his destroyed home in Vilonia, Arkansas. The worst floods in decades deluged roads and engulfed homes and cars in Florida's Panhandle and coastal Alabama, in the recent mayhem created by a tornado-packing storm system that killed at least 34 people. Loving has terminal cancer and decided to forego further treatment.

In this picture posted Tuesday, a man walks his camel across the barren landscape of the valleys of the limestone mountains of the Makran strip in Iran along the Gulf of Oman. When the winter rains arrive, they erode the surfaces of the mountains as water begins to fill the valleys. But all that's left behind when the water goes are the clay deposits from the hills which then crack in periods of drought. Photos: CFP