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.
Read more about Severe Weather: Terminology, Causes, Categories, High Winds, Hail, Heavy Rainfall and Flooding
Famous quotes containing the words severe and/or weather:
“I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents—about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)