Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Only during Hurricane Katrina has the United States, in modern times, been able to relate to the massive suffering a catastrophic weather event can inflict on a Third World nation.

The death toll continues to mount in Bangladesh from last week's cyclone (a hurricane by another name), now pushing well above Katrina's estimated 1,800 to 2,500 dead. It is a sobering thought to consider that even if the toll reaches 10,000, as some believe it could, this storm will be not even be close to being that nation's deadliest.

A November 1970 cyclone may have killed as many as 500,000 people, according to some estimates, in Bangladesh and eastern India. In April 1991, another cyclone was blamed for killing at least 138,000 people in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a small, extremely crowded nation largely situated on low river deltas. To the south is the Bay of Bengal, an extremely warm arm of the Indian Ocean.

Strong hurricanes -- called cyclones in the Indian Ocean area -- brew over that hot water, which is sometimes close to 90 degrees. Then those storms move northward toward Bangladesh, pushing a massive wall of water -- the storm surge -- ahead of them.

That wall of water has little to stop it as it rushes over the low delta lands of Bangladesh. Those lowlands are thickly populated, often by people in poorly constructed housing. The potential for catastrophe is huge, and the scenario repeats itself over and over again.

During Katrina, millions of people evacuated the coast before the storm thanks to three days' warning and a modern highway network. The communication and transportation infrastructure in Bangladesh don't allow such evacuations even when forecasts and warnings are issued well ahead of a storm.

It is not exaggerating to call Bangladesh a deathtrap where tropical cyclones are concerned. What's more, the nation experiences a short but vicious tornado season each spring and gets swamped by monsoon rains on a yearly basis. It is hot and sticky almost year-round.

Sadly, last week's cyclone tragedy will almost certainly repeat itself in a future year. But then, there's no guarantee that the New Orleans-Mississippi Gulf Coast tragedy of 2005 won't repeat itself on a section of the U.S. coast.

Modern technology goes only so far in the face of nature's worst tempests.

Warmth followed by cold

Today will be the second consecutive day of near-record warmth in our area, with temperatures likely close to 70 degrees in Roanoke.

Don't get used to it. A major cold front moving through on Thanksgiving will return us to cold, blustery weather for a few days. Don't be surprised to see a few snowflakes in the air by Friday morning.

There is an intriguing system threatening to move up the coast by the late part of the weekend. This time around, it doesn't look like the cold air will be set up right to provide significant wintry precipitation, but we could get some needed rain.

We'll take a look at it in Saturday's column to see if anything has changed.