A roof heavy with snow begins to creak over a packed gymnasium on the night of the final game.The janitor wants everyone out. Turn: the teams finish it in the parking lot.
After the eruption, a farmer loses a year's crop to the ash and starts planning the next.The fields need time. Turn: she raises seedlings in trays for the whole valley.
A ski town gets no snow all winter and then a whole season's worth in one night.The lifts are buried. Turn: the first run of the year is the one to dig them out.
A boy paddles his grandmother's flooded street in a kayak, delivering the mail the carrier could not.One house is not answering. Turn: the answer comes from an upstairs window.
A bridge keeper has to close the only bridge with the school bus still on the far side.The river is at the mark. Turn: the far bank has a village hall, and his sister runs it.
A child is sure that the storm drain speaks before every flood.Nobody believes her. Turn: her little brother does, and carries the bikes upstairs each time.
A dust storm swallows a highway, and forty strangers wait it out in one diner.The cook has food for ten. Turn: a trucker's load turns out to be flour.
A ferry captain must choose between riding out a storm at sea and running for a harbor he does not know.The chart is thirty years old. Turn: a passenger grew up in that harbor.
A flash flood comes down a dry creek bed under a blue sky, from rain that fell miles away.Campers have pitched in the wash. Turn: a rancher's dog will not stop barking at the sand.
A girl keeps a rain gauge for a school project and notices the number nobody else has.Adults say it always rains in April. Turn: the dam keeper asks to see her notebook.
A harbor master must order every boat out of the water in one afternoon.One owner cannot be found. Turn: his rivals haul his boat up last, and carefully.
A houseboat breaks its mooring in a flood and drifts through the town it was never allowed to enter.Its owner is asleep. Turn: she wakes outside the council chamber.
A lighthouse lamp fails on the worst night of the year.A fishing fleet is still out. Turn: the town lines the cliff with car headlights.
A radio host stays on air through a hurricane with one caller left on the line.The caller is alone and scared. Turn: listeners begin phoning in to keep her company.
A river rises a step an hour, and a family carries its life upstairs one armful at a time.The grandfather clock will not go. Turn: the neighbors arrive with ropes and an argument about stairs.
A sandbag line is one person short, and the only one left to ask is the man the town drove out.He lives on the high ground. Turn: he comes down with his own shovel.
A storm chaser's truck breaks down in the one county with clear skies.The storm of the decade is two counties over. Turn: the mechanic has a better story.
A thunderstorm traps a hiking club on the wrong side of a rising stream.The only bridge is a log. Turn: the slowest walker is the one who packed a rope.
A tornado siren sounds during a school play, and the cast finishes the last act in the basement.The lead has stage fright only upstairs. Turn: the best show of the run has no stage.
A town that floods every spring votes on whether to move uphill.The vote ties. Turn: the deciding vote belongs to the oldest house's newest owner.
A town that waited three years for rain gets a year's worth in one night.The fair is pitched on the dry riverbed. Turn: the Ferris wheel becomes the lookout.
A weather forecaster's own town is the one place her warning did not reach.The mast is down. Turn: she drives the route herself with a borrowed megaphone.
A wedding party is cut off by floodwater in a hilltop hall with all the food and none of the guests.The road is under. Turn: the guests arrive by tractor, in boots.
A zookeeper must move the animals to higher ground before the river crests.The giraffes do not fit the truck. Turn: the walk down Main Street becomes the town's legend.
The eye of a hurricane passes over a street, and the neighbors step out into a calm that will not last.Half of them want to check the boats. Turn: a girl counts the minutes aloud, and they listen.
Lightning strikes the same oak three summers running, and the family that owns it wants to know why.A tree surgeon says cut it. Turn: an iron stake in its roots tells an older story.
The rains arrive a month late, and a village that planted on time must decide whether to plant again.Seed is short. Turn: the oldest farmer held back a sack, as she does every year.
Two rival farmers share one storm cellar for a night.They have not spoken in ten years. Turn: by morning one fence is gone and neither mentions it.
Earthquake and volcano 25
A bell tower leans a little more after every tremor, and the ringer keeps ringing.The council wants it down. Turn: the lean is the only reason visitors come.
A crack opens across a schoolyard overnight, along the line where two towns once joined.Each side claims the school. Turn: the pupils build the bridge.
A family sleeps in the garden for a week because the aftershocks keep coming.The children love it; the parents do not. Turn: the neighbors move their beds out too.
A geologist's warnings are ignored until her instruments are stolen.Someone is selling them as scrap. Turn: the thief read the needle before he ran.
A girl on a school trip is the only one who took the earthquake drill seriously.The guide freezes. Turn: thirty classmates do exactly what she says.
A grandfather tells of the eruption he saw as a boy, and nobody believes the green hill is a volcano.It has been quiet for a lifetime. Turn: the lake at the top is warm.
A hermit who lives on a volcano comes down to town for the first time in twenty years.Nobody asks why. Turn: a boy does, and the hermit answers.
A hot spring that a town depends on runs cold the day after a tremor.The bathhouse is the only employer. Turn: a new spring has opened in a rival's field.
A landslide closes the only road into a valley in harvest week.The crop must get out. Turn: the old mule track still exists, and one woman remembers it.
A lava flow creeps toward a village, and everyone has a week to choose what to carry.One man will not leave his orchard. Turn: the village carries the saplings for him.
A museum guard spends the night of an earthquake catching vases.He saves all but one. Turn: the broken one was the fake.
A needle in a school lab draws a line that the science teacher cannot explain away.The class thinks someone bumped the desk. Turn: the desk was empty.
A night-shift baker feels the first tremor and is the only one awake to knock on doors.Nobody answers a baker at four. Turn: she uses the delivery van's horn.
A radio operator relays messages for a shaken city from a set in her kitchen.The batteries are fading. Turn: the street brings her every flashlight it has.
A sinkhole swallows a town's only traffic light.Nobody is hurt and nobody can agree who goes first. Turn: a child with a whistle takes charge.
A statue in the square turns to face the other way during an earthquake.The town always said it watched the harbor. Turn: now it watches the school, and stays.
A tour guide has told visitors for thirty years that the volcano is asleep, and this morning the ground is warm.The tour is fully booked. Turn: she gives her best one yet, from the far ridge.
A tunnel crew is cut off by a rockfall with a lunch meant for one shift.Help will take two days. Turn: the newest hand knows forty songs.
A wedding cake survives an earthquake that brings down the tent around it.The guests are fine and the tent is flat. Turn: the party goes on in the open, round the cake.
After a tremor, a town finds that its stream now runs down the next street over.The mill is dry and the bakery is wet. Turn: the miller and the baker trade buildings.
An earthquake shakes open a wall in an old house and shows a room nobody knew was there.It is furnished. Turn: the letters in its desk are addressed to the family.
An earthquake stops every clock in a town at the same minute, and one keeps going.It belongs to the watchmaker nobody visits. Turn: his shop becomes where the town meets.
The sea draws back from a beach farther than anyone has seen, and only the ice cream seller knows what it means.Tourists walk out to look at the fish. Turn: he rings the bell of his cart until they turn round.
Two fishing villages watch one volcano from opposite shores, and each has a different name for it.A new map needs one name. Turn: the surveyor asks the children, who have a third.
Volcanic ash falls on a town hundreds of miles from the mountain, and nobody knows what it is.It ruins the laundry first. Turn: a retired sailor has seen it once before.
Snow and ice 25
A blizzard strands a delivery driver at a farmhouse whose owner has not had a guest in years.The van is full of other people's parcels. Turn: one is addressed to the farmer.
A boy who has never seen snow moves north the week of the worst storm in years.He will not come indoors. Turn: he is the one who spots the neighbor's buried car.
A climber waits out a storm in a snow cave with a stranger who speaks no language she knows.They share one stove. Turn: they come down by a route neither would try alone.
A cold snap freezes a town's pipes, and the one working tap belongs to its least liked resident.A line forms at her gate. Turn: she puts out a bench.
A cold wave knocks out the heating in a school on exam day.Pens will not write and hands will not hold them. Turn: the exam is sat in the kitchen, by the ovens.
A frost comes in the middle of the apple blossom, and an orchard stays up all night.Small fires between the rows may not be enough. Turn: the wind changes at four.
A girl builds a snow wall round her grandmother's door for fun, and it is still standing when the drifts come.The street is buried to the sills. Turn: one door opens.
A greenhouse loses its heat in a cold snap, and the grower has one night to save the seedlings.The spare part is a town away. Turn: she carries the trays into her own kitchen and sleeps on the stairs.
A herder brings the flock down the mountain a day ahead of the first blizzard, against the calendar.The others laugh. Turn: by night they are asking to borrow her barn.
A lake high above a village rises a little each summer as the ice melts, and one shepherd keeps the count.Officials want proof. Turn: her knotted string goes back thirty years.
A mail carrier on skis is the only link between two villages all winter.One letter has no reply for months. Turn: she delivers the next in person and waits.
A mountain hotel is cut off by snow with a full conference of weather forecasters inside.None of them saw it coming. Turn: the porter did, and had ordered extra bread.
A mountain hut keeper counts the hikers in at dusk and comes up one short.The snow is closing in. Turn: the missing one is asleep in the woodshed.
A roof heavy with snow begins to creak over a packed gymnasium on the night of the final game.The janitor wants everyone out. Turn: the teams finish it in the parking lot.
A ski lift stops in a whiteout with two rivals in one chair.They will be there an hour. Turn: one has a thermos and the other has the cups.
A ski town gets no snow all winter and then a whole season's worth in one night.The lifts are buried. Turn: the first run of the year is the one to dig them out.
A sled dog team turns back against the musher's orders.She is furious. Turn: the lead dog had smelled open water ahead.
A snow day lasts so long that the children start their own school.The teacher cannot get in. Turn: she finds them teaching fractions with firewood.
A snowstorm arrives in a town that owns no shovels.Nobody there has seen snow settle. Turn: a girl from the north teaches a street to use baking trays.
A vet on snowshoes sets out for a farm that the road no longer reaches.A mare is foaling. Turn: the farmer's daughter has managed it already, with the vet on the phone.
A village keeps its one road open by hand all winter, a family to each stretch.One stretch is never cleared. Turn: the neighbors on either side quietly lengthen theirs.
An avalanche closes a mountain pass with half a wedding party on each side.The bride is on one side, the rings on the other. Turn: the vows are read by radio.
An ice jam dams a river above a town, and the water behind it rises by the hour.The engineers are a day away. Turn: an old ferryman knows where the ice always lets go.
An ice storm coats every branch and wire, and a town wakes to a power cut and a world of glass.The lines are down for a week. Turn: one house has a wood stove and an open door.
An icebreaker's crew is frozen in for a season within sight of the harbor lights.Home is a mile off and out of reach. Turn: the town signals the news each night by lamp.
The day after 25
A boy keeps a list of every stranger who helped his street and means to thank them all.There are ninety names and no addresses. Turn: he paints the list on the new sea wall.
A bridge washed out in spring is rebuilt by two villages that each start from their own bank.The halves do not quite meet. Turn: the step in the middle becomes a meeting place.
A café with no roof opens the morning after the hurricane, serving whatever is left.There is coffee and no cups. Turn: customers bring their own and stay to sweep.
A carpenter rebuilds her neighbors' houses before her own.Winter is a month off. Turn: on the last day the whole street turns up with tools.
A choir whose hall was flooded rehearses in a supermarket parking lot.Shoppers stop to listen. Turn: the concert is held there, and it sells out.
A fisherman's boat is found a mile inland in a field of barley.The farmer wants it moved. Turn: his children have already named it.
A flood leaves a high-water line on every wall in town, and the town argues over whether to paint it out.Half want to forget. Turn: the school keeps its line and adds the date.
A girl finds a photo album in the mud and sets out to find the family in it.The faces are strangers. Turn: one of them is her teacher, forty years ago.
A girl is given the job of ringing the school bell again on the first morning back.The rope is new and the bell is cracked. Turn: it sounds better to everyone.
A library dries ten thousand books on clotheslines across a football field.Rain is forecast. Turn: the team carries them in, a shelf to a player.
A man returns to his farm after the wildfire and finds one green tree.He nearly sells up. Turn: a neighbor arrives with seedlings grown from its seed.
A mayor has to choose which street gets its power back first.Hers is on the list. Turn: she puts it last, and her neighbors notice.
A reporter sent to cover the damage puts down her camera and picks up a shovel.Her editor wants pictures. Turn: the story she files has none.
A storm takes a family's house and leaves the front door standing in its frame.They knock before they walk through. Turn: the door goes into the new house first.
A town's lost property after the tornado fills a gymnasium.One wedding dress has no claimant. Turn: a bride-to-be asks to borrow it.
A town's school is the shelter, and a teacher keeps lessons going between the camp beds.There are no books. Turn: every grown-up there is asked to teach one thing.
A volunteer who came to help for a weekend is still there a year later.Her old job has stopped calling. Turn: the town holds a vote on her.
A year after the flood, a street holds a party on the day the water came.One house stays dark. Turn: the party moves to its front garden.
After an earthquake, a child will not sleep indoors, and her grandfather pitches a tent beside hers.His back complains. Turn: he stays out a week after she goes in.
After the eruption, a farmer loses a year's crop to the ash and starts planning the next.The fields need time. Turn: she raises seedlings in trays for the whole valley.
After the storm, a boy's lost dog is found by the one neighbor his family never speaks to.She has fed it for three days. Turn: the dog now expects two dinners.
An insurance assessor visits forty wrecked houses and is offered tea in every one.She is not meant to accept. Turn: by the fortieth she is carrying messages between them.
The first shop to reopen after the flood is the barber's, and the whole town comes in to talk.Nobody needs a haircut. Turn: the barber starts a list of who needs what.
The morning after a flood, a street lays everything it owns on the sidewalk to dry.Nobody can tell whose chairs are whose. Turn: nobody much minds.
Two families who lost their homes are given one house to share until spring.They agree on nothing. Turn: the children draw up the rules.
How it works
These natural disaster story ideas are 100 premises where the weather or the ground is the danger: 25 each for storm and flood, earthquake and volcano, snow and ice, and the day after.
Read the full guide
Disaster stories sorted by event
Earthquake and volcano also takes in a landslide, a sinkhole and a slow lava flow. The day after is the quiet group: the water has gone down, and the story is what a street does next.
Survival and rescue, nothing graphic
Every premise is about people: who knocks on doors, who shares the last warm room, who decides which street gets its power back first. Nobody dies and nobody is hurt in any of them.
Pick the hour. The night before, the minute it hits and the morning after are three different stories.
Give one character a job to do, a bus to drive or a bell to ring, and the disaster has a plot.
Questions and answers
What are some good natural disaster story ideas?
Ones with a small human problem inside the large event. A blizzard strands a delivery driver at a farmhouse whose owner has not had a guest in years. An earthquake stops every clock in a town, and one keeps going.
How do I write a story about a natural disaster?
Choose one person and one thing they must do, then let the event get in the way. Keep the scale small: one street, one night, one decision. The group The day after has 25 aftermaths to write toward.
Are these based on real disasters?
No. Every premise was made up for this page, and none names a real storm, earthquake, eruption or place. The seven natural facts they lean on, such as the sea drawing back before a tsunami, were checked against Wikipedia.