Authorities in the Philippines say nearly 800,000 people have been displaced and are warning the death toll may soar above 10,000.
The awful estimates come as rescue workers face extraordinary difficulties in their efforts to help survivors of Typhoon Haiyan.
The truth is that nobody yet knows the full scale of tragedy.
Some meteorologists said the storm made landfall with sustained winds above 300kmh; others reported winds of 240kmh plus.
Photos and television footage showed roofs being ripped off homes and waves crashing into wooden buildings, which splintered under the force. Vehicles were shown piled on top of one another.
The Social Welfare and Development Department said the storm affected 4.3 million people in about 270 towns and cities spread across 36 provinces in the central Philippines.
A United Nations disaster team visited the area during the weekend with the head of the team saying the last time he saw something on the same scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami - the Boxing Day disaster which swept through Indonesia and other countries in 2004.
In terms of Typhoon Haiyan, because they knew what was coming, some people were successfully evacuated from the most exposed areas.
The Philippine Government knows more about such terrible storms and natural disasters than most - Haiyan is the 25th typhoon to strike the region this year.
And last month, an earthquake measuring 7.3 devastated the island of Bophol and killed hundreds.
In Vietnam, even though the typhoon was downgraded to a category one storm, 600,000 were evacuated before its arrival yesterday.
New Zealand, among many other countries, has rushed to supply immediate aid to the Philippines, but the real need will be for long-term support to help restore homes, infrastructure and help families live until fields can be replanted and crops replaced.
Individuals can help too; details of how can be found in the pages of this newspaper.
Extreme weather events are becoming more common around the world.
In Australia, an early bushfire season arrived with spring, and teams of firefighters are still battling the flames weeks later.
The flames destroyed hundreds of homes and intensified a political debate about whether there is a link with global warming.
Parts of Australia were experiencing temperatures of 40degC at the start of spring, with weather experts predicting a hot summer for New Zealand's closest neighbour.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is warning the bushfires follow the country's hottest year on record.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott dismissed comments made by a senior United Nations official, who linked the bushfires to changing climate as someone ''talking through their hat''.
But former United States vice-president Al Gore says denying the link between the fires and global warming is like claiming smoking did not cause lung cancer.
Undeterred, Mr Abbott has pledged to get rid of Australia's carbon tax.
Other conservative governments around the world, including in New Zealand, are less than enthusiastic about the term global warming.
Perhaps, then, the term climate change more effectively embraces what the globe is now experiencing.
With the onset of the northern hemisphere winter, reports of icing, death and destruction will no doubt soon hog the headlines.
Those headlines will give climate-change opponents the chance to dismiss any talk of global warming as records about the coldest winters pile up.
Any links between the worst typhoon on record sweeping through the Philippines and rising sea levels may never be proved, and in fact, may not exist.
But such events are impossible to ignore.
At the least, climate change must be put back on the agenda of politicians.
Quite simply, they must try to find some sort of agreement on carbon reduction during the Warsaw Climate Change Conference which starts this week.
