A local storm is a mesoscale atmospheric phenomenon characterized by convective or frontal activity confined to a limited geographic area and short temporal duration, typically driven by localized instabilities in temperature, moisture, and wind fields. It often arises from buoyant updrafts in conditionally unstable air masses, enhanced by mesoscale convergence zones such as sea breezes, orography, or differential surface heating. Local storms can include intense precipitation, gusty winds, lightning, and occasionally hail or downbursts, with spatial scales from a few to tens of kilometers. Their evolution is strongly influenced by boundary-layer processes and vertical wind shear, making them challenging to predict with coarse-resolution numerical models.
Two companion papers in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society provide new insight into the causes and predictability of the 2025 Texas Hill Country floods, the deadliest flash flood event in the United States ...
Environment
Jul 21, 2026
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Climate change could make historically rare tropical storms in Southern California produce significantly more precipitation in the next few decades, and when they strike, landslides are likely to become a bigger risk across ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 10, 2026
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Cities don't just change the landscape, they change the weather. According to a new study analyzing tens of thousands of rain events in Texas, whether urban areas make rain worse, lighter or simply different depends strongly ...
Environment
May 20, 2026
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More than 2 trillion gallons of water—enough to fill 3 million Olympic-sized swimming pools—inundated Hawaiʻi in March. The accumulated rainfall over 14 days reached as high as 3,000% of normal historical levels for this ...
Environment
Apr 1, 2026
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People may be frustrated by the lack of detail when weather forecasters say, "There will be thunderstorms popping up, but we don't know where." Now a key finding in a study by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 4, 2026
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The rumble of thunderstorms across the country this week is a noisy reminder that summer is arriving—and with it, the mix of heat, humidity and unstable air that fuels these bursts of wild weather.
Environment
Dec 3, 2025
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Our ability to predict extreme weather from thunderstorms, like the recent catastrophic flash floods in Texas, is unsettlingly poor, even in the hours leading up to the event. Improvements in understanding, detecting and ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 9, 2025
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Storm Floris made landfall in northern parts of the UK on the morning of Monday August 4, 2025, bringing intense rainfall followed by severe winds throughout the afternoon. The Met Office issued an amber weather warning for ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 4, 2025
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Crack! Boom! We're entering the daily summer thunderstorm season in Florida. The clouds roll in and, with them, you sometimes see lightning in the distance. Then you hear thunder.
Environment
Jun 5, 2025
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Severe storms that tore through the US states of Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia left more than 25 people dead, leveling homes and businesses while knocking out power for tens of thousands, authorities say.
Environment
May 18, 2025
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