Bomb cyclones can produce heavy rain, blizzard conditions, and intense winds

Nor'easters can produce thundersnow—lightning in blizzard conditions

Although thunderstorms typically require warm air to rise in updrafts and collide with heavier soft hail, which creates charge separation and eventual electrical discharge, these cyclones can replicate these conditions by churning the atmosphere through strong winds. Rarely, especially warm lakes can similarly help generate thunderstorms during the winter.

Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones around the world

Tropical cyclones are named differently based on their region of origin due to historical traditions and cultural importance. These storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeast Pacific oceans, cyclones in the southwest Pacific and Indian oceans, and typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

Atmospheric processes amplify the strength of storms by coalescing clouds

Research has shown that turbulent mixing of air at the edges of clouds and other small-scale thermal activity beneath them help clouds group together, intensifying short bursts of rainfall, especially in tropical regions. Simulations reveal this produces more powerful storms than predicted by older models, though they may occur less frequently.

How do hurricanes form?

Tropical cyclones, also called hurricanes and typhoons, cause catastrophic damage when they strike land. This four-minute video explores the life cycle of cyclones—how atmospheric conditions, ocean temperatures, and the Earth’s rotation combine to create them, and how they are driven by winds and eventually weaken after moving over land.

As of 2025, the world's largest tropical cyclone spanned half the continental US

Typhoon Tip traveled across the western Pacific Ocean in 1979, achieving winds of 300 kilometers per hour. Though it weakened significantly before making landfall in Japan, its rainfall produced over 600 mudslides and killed 42 people.

Rapid intensification can cause hurricanes to increase by two categories in 24 hours

Rapid intensification is a 35 mph or more increase in a hurricane's sustained wind speed within 24 hours. The phenomenon is expected to become more common, resulting in more storms becoming life-threatening faster than people can modify their preparations for the increased intensity.

Learn all about different types of extreme weather

Find out in more detail about different types of extreme weather, from flooding to thunderstorms, from tropical cyclones to sandstorms, and more (w/ helpful videos).

Tropical cyclones consist of three main parts: the eye, the eyewall, and rainbands

The eye is a calm, clear central area surrounded by an eyewall of intense thunderstorms. Rainbands are spiral bands of clouds and thunderstorms extending from the eyewall.

In a tornado outbreak, a single severe weather system can spawn multiple twisters

By maintaining the ingredients for tornadoes—differences in wind speed and direction across altitudes, moisture, and rising air—for long periods of time as it moves across a region, a severe thunderstorm can continuously produce tornadoes by lifting multiple columns of horizontally rotating air.

Trade winds blow from east to west due to the Coriolis Effect

Warm air rises near the equator while cooler air sinks near the poles, creating circulation patterns that curve due to Earth's rotation. At the equator, doldrums—calm regions of no wind—build warm, moist air, creating storms.

Learn about various ocean-atmosphere cycles impacting global weather patterns

Although the El Niño-Southern Oscillation is among the most impactful, the North Atlantic Oscillation strongly influences weather patterns in the Northeast US by periodically changing atmospheric pressure over the Atlantic. The North Pacific Oscillation fluctuates atmospheric pressure and sea-surface temperatures that affect winter temperatures over much of the US.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of severe turbulence

Severe turbulence over the North Atlantic has increased by 55% over the past 40 years, driven by strengthened jet streams and storm systems. Ongoing increases in global temperatures, which fuel these changes, may triple severe turbulence incidents in the coming decades.

The first known instance of a fire tornado occurred in 2003

During pyro-tornadogenesis, many processes that create thunderstorms from wildfires, such as rising hot air and steam from evaporated water in forests, fuel the formation of a fire tornado. The increasing rates of wildfires due to climate change are expected to make this phenomenon and other extreme weather more common.

Dust from the Sahel and Saharan regions makes northwest Africa a hurricane nursery

NASA’s Convective Processes Experiment—Cabo Verde studied the early stages of hurricane formation, identifying how dust interacts with clouds over the ocean to produce the rainy disturbances that become tropical cyclones.

What is a heat dome?

The world is seeing regular heat waves with multiple causes, including so-called "heat domes," a term rising in use in recent years. A heat dome occurs when the atmosphere traps hot ocean air like a lid or cap, creating stifling conditions and resulting in extended periods of heat. See an illustration of this phenomenon and read how it works with this brief explainer.

Hurricane conditions are created in a University of Miami wind-wave tank

The SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction Wind Wave Laboratory contains a 38,000-gallon wave pool connected to a wind tunnel that can generate air currents of up to 155 mph. SUSTAIN allows scientists to study how the atmosphere interacts with the ocean in extreme weather.

Stretching from Texas to the Dakotas, Tornado Alley is a US tornado hotspot

The region experiences atmospheric instability and extensive wind shear due to the convergence of warm, moist air from the Gulf with cooler, drier air from the Rockies. However, some recent data suggests tornadoes are more frequent and more powerful in the Dixie Valley, which includes much of the lower Mississippi Valley.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Violent storms and crushing pressure await those inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

As seen from space, Jupiter’s most striking feature is an anticyclone 30% larger than Earth, with winds twice the speed of Category 5 hurricanes. The descent into the storm brings enough pressure to strip atoms of their electrons.

The NOAA has a specialized team of researchers that fly directly into hurricanes

The reconnaissance missions gather data for computer models to forecast hurricanes and improve disaster preparedness. Each flight can last eight to ten hours and uses a specialized Air Force fleet.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

Every day, lightning releases several Hiroshima bombs' worth of energy into the atmosphere

If all this lightning struck one location at once, the bolt would be the diameter of the center circle of a basketball court, turning the entire court into a crater. Its heat would ignite surfaces for miles around, and its shockwave would demolish buildings.

Every tropical storm is named from one of six predetermined lists

The lists of names are reused every six years and are maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. If a named storm becomes significant, its name is retired and replaced on the list.

The 'butterfly effect' is the informal name for chaos theory

In mathematics, chaos theory involves complex systems that are highly sensitive to their initial conditions. Originally discovered when analyzing weather data, slight variations in the data input into such systems create drastically different results, despite following known physical laws.

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

Simulate the impact of an antimatter bomb around the world

Using "Total Annihilator," users can click on a location on the map, select the antimatter mass, and the observation altitude before detonating the bomb. Scrolling through the left sidebar reveals the impacts of the detonation, including the sizes of the resulting fireball and thermal pulse, the spread of ionizing radiation, and the atmospheric effects.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

What is a reply all email storm?

When 30,000 people receive an email, to which anyone can "reply all," a spontaneous chain reaction of many more messages can be sparked, producing what's known as an "email storm." This has happened at a large scale in several high-profile cases, most notably in Thomson Reuter's email database. Check out Know Your Meme's breakdown of this phenomenon and description of several major examples.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

Poison ivy will likely become both larger and more resilient due to climate change.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Animal phobias are likely the most common type of phobias, followed by an extreme fear of heights.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US