Storms

Severe Local Storms

Knowledge of severe local storms has been increasing rapidly in recent years as a result of both observational studies and numerical modeling experiments. This paper reviews that knowledge as it relates to development of new applications for forecasting of severe local storms. Many of these new applications are based on physical understanding of processes taking place on the storm scale and thu...

Dust Storms: Schwartz's Response

Coarse Particles and Dust Storm Mortality In a paper titled "Episodes of High Coarse Partide Concentrations Are Not Associated with Increased Mortality," Schwartz et al. (1) concluded that "coarse particles from windblown dust are not associated with mortality risk." The authors seem to have overlooked the medical literature on the health effects of the historic U.S. dust storms of the dust bow...

Lake Effect Snow Storms

Definition: The term “lake effect” generally refers to the effect of any lake in modifying the weather about its shore and for some distance downwind. In the United States, this term is applied specifically to the region about the Great Lakes or the Great Salt Lake. More specifically, lake effect often refers to the generation of sometimes spectacular snowfall amounts to the lee of the Great La...

Of Streams and Storms

Intensified Arabian Sea tropical storms

Tropical cyclones over the Arabian Sea in the pre-monsoon season (May–June) have intensified since 1997 (ref. 1, Fig. 1a) owing to significant reductions in storm-ambient vertical wind shear (VWS) in the troposphere; these reductions have decreased on average by about 3m s from the pre-1997 epoch (1979–1997) to the recent epoch (1998–2010). The authors attribute the reduction of premonsoon VWS ...