Severe Weather

When Will Severe and Hazardous Weather Strike?

Severe and hazardous weather can include conditions produced by thunderstorms, including damaging winds, tornadoes, large hail, flooding and flash flooding, and winter storms associated with freezing rain, sleet, snow and strong winds.

NOAA satellites don't just help us monitor severe and hazardous weather, but also help us analyze weather patterns to predict when and where it will strike.

Two tornadoes making landfall near a house

Two tornadoes touching down near a house.

Severe and Hazardous Weather Common Phenomena

Thunderstorms

Severe thunderstorms are capable of producing hail that is an inch or larger or wind gusts over 58 mph.

See thunderstorms across the world

Image of thunderstorms over southern Africa

Convection

Convection is the vertical transport of heat and moisture by updrafts and downdrafts in an unstable atmosphere.

Here's what convection looks like

Satellite view of Tropical Cyclone Herold, captured by NOAA-20 on March 15, 2020.

Hurricanes

The term hurricane is used for Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds of 74 mph, located east of the International Dateline to the Greenwich Meridian.

Visualize swirling hurricanes

Infrared view of severe weather across parts of Missouri and Oklahoma

Tornadoes

Tornadoes are narrow, swiftly rotating columns of air that extend from the base of a thunderstorm to the ground. About 1,200 tornadoes occur in the U.S. annually.

See satellite imagery of tornadoes

Flooding imagery of Midland, Mich. tracing out flooded areas in red and orange.

Floods

Floods are an overflow of water onto land that is normally dry. Floods can happen during heavy rains, when ocean waves come on shore, when snow melts too fast, or when dams or levees break.

See images of floods

Lightning

Lightning is the buildup and discharge of electrical energy, caused by the attraction between positive and negative charges in the atmosphere.

Gaze at lightning from space

A rolling line of thunderstorms above Texas.

Hail

Hail consists of pellets of frozen rain which fall in showers from cumulonimbus clouds.

See severe storms that produced hail

Satellite imagery from GOES East shows a derecho moving across the mid-Mississippi Valley

Derechos

A derecho is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath.

Look at derechos racing across the U.S.

Severe Weather

When Will Severe and Hazardous Weather Strike?

Severe and Hazardous Weather Common Phenomena

More Articles on Severe Weather