List of severe weather phenomena
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Severe weather phenomena are weather conditions that are hazardous to human life and property.
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Severe weather can occur under a variety of situations, but three characteristics are generally needed: a temperature or moisture boundary, moisture, and (in the event of severe, precipitation-based events) instability in the atmosphere.
Examples
Atmospheric
Electrical storms
- Thundershower
- Thunderstorm formerly Thunder
- Derecho
- Multicellular thunderstorm
- Pulse storm
- Squall line
- Storm cell (single-cell)
- Supercells, rotating thunderstorms
- Lightning
Fire
- Wildfire or bushfire (ignition of wildfires is sometimes by lightning strike, especially in "dry thunderstorms")
- Firestorm
- Fire whirl, also called firenado and fire tornado
Flood
Oceans and bodies of water
- Harmful algal bloom
- High seas
- Sneaker wave
- High tides
- King tide
- Ice shove
- Rogue wave
- Seiche
- Swell (ocean)
- Tidal surge
- Storm surge
- Rip currents
- Undertow (water waves)
- Whirlpools
Snow
Ice
Rain
- Acid rain
- Blood rain
- Cold drop (Spanish: gota fría; archaic as a meteorological term), colloquially, any high impact rainfall event along the Mediterranean coast of Spain
- Drought, a prolonged water supply shortage, often caused by persistent lack of, or much reduced, rainfall
- Floods
- Rainstorm
- Red rain in Kerala (for related phenomena, see Blood rain)
- Monsoon
Surface movement
- Avalanche
- Mass wasting and landslips
Temperature
Wind
- Cyclones
- Extratropical cyclone
- "Medicane", Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones
- Polar cyclone
- Tropical cyclone, also called a hurricane, typhoon, or just "cyclone"
- Subtropical cyclone
- Australian east coast low
- Explosive cyclogenesis or weather bomb
- Dust storm
- Hurricane
- Katabatic winds
- Gale
- Monsoon
- Nor’easter
- Nor'westers
- Steam devil
- Squall
- Tornado (also colloquially referred to as a "whirlwind" or "twister")
- Landspout
- Gustnado, a "gust front tornado"
- Waterspout
- Winter storms
- Wind gust
- Windstorm
- Gust front
Other
- Heat lightning
- Zud, widespread livestock death, mainly by starvation, caused by climatic conditions
- Hayfever
Some related meteorological terms: weather front ,gust front , bow echo,Atmospheric river
Phenomena caused by severe thunderstorms
- Excessive Lightning
- Derecho
- Extreme wind (70 mph or greater)
- Downpours
- Heavy rain
- Flood, flash flood, coastal flooding
- Hail
- High winds – 93 km/h(58 mph) or higher.
- Lightning
- Thundersnow, Snowsquall
- Tornado
- Windstorm (gradient pressure induced)
- Severe thunderstorm (hailstorm, downburst: microbursts and macrobursts)