Severe Weather

Severe weather refers to any dangerous meteorological phenomena with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or loss of human life. Types of severe weather phenomena vary, depending on the latitude, altitude, topography, and atmospheric conditions. High winds, hail, excessive precipitation, and wildfires are forms and effects of severe weather, as are thunderstorms, downbursts, lightning, tornadoes, waterspouts, tropical cyclones, and extratropical cyclones. Regional and seasonal severe weather phenomena include blizzards, snowstorms, ice storms, and duststorms.

Meteorologists generally define severe weather as any aspect of the weather that poses risks to life, property or requires the intervention of authorities. A narrower definition of severe weather is any weather phenomena relating to severe thunderstorms.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), severe weather can be categorized into two groups: general severe weather and localized severe weather.Nor'easters, European wind storms, and the phenomena that accompany them form over wide geographic areas. These occurrences are classified as general severe weather. Downbursts and tornadoes are more localized and therefore have a more limited geographic effect. These forms of weather are classified as localized severe weather. The term severe weather is technically not the same phenomenon as extreme weather. Extreme weather describes unusual weather events that are at the extremes of the historical distribution for a given area.

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