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Concept
Severe weather
Summary
Severe weather is any dangerous meteorological phenomenon 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, tornadoes, waterspouts, tropical cyclones, and extratropical cyclones. Regional and seasonal severe weather phenomena include blizzards (snowstorms), ice storms, and duststorms.
Severe weather is one type of extreme weather, which includes unexpected, unusual, severe, or unseasonal weather and is by definition rare for that location or time of the year. Due to the effects of climate change, the frequency and intensity of some of the extreme weather events is increasing, for example heatwaves and droughts.
Meteorologists have generally defined 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.
Extreme weather#Causes and attribution
Organized severe weather occurs from the same conditions that generate ordinary thunderstorms: atmospheric moisture, lift (often from thermals), and instability.
Official source
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