What exactly is extreme or severe weather?

Question

I've done some digging and I've come up with two things that tend to define extreme or severe weather: a) extreme weather is based on an event's climatological distribution and occurs only 5% or less of the time, and, b) extreme weather is rare.

So I have a few questions:

1. Is 5% really rare? If there are 20 thunderstorms in a season and one is really bad, does that make it an extreme weather event and is a once a year rare?

2. When a weather event happens, and it makes the news because, well, it's big news and it's called extreme weather, is there actually a check against climatological data to see if it's outside the 5% range?

3. What is a climatological distribution? How many years is the data record? What was weather like 1000, 5000, 10000 years ago?

4. Is extreme weather tied to damage? If an extreme event happens in a remote place where there is no human death or structure damage, is it still an extreme event?

5. Does increased damage caused by extreme weather include the fact that there is increased infrastructure and human habitation in extreme weather zones?

6. Is extreme weather and severe weather synonymous?

Answer 1

We used to get some pretty big thunderstorms where I grew up in South Dakota. Here in California, even a baby Thunderstorm would be extreme and would probably freak out most Californians but then again a baby earthquake would send most South Dakotans running out in the snow.



I think that a hurricane hitting Jersey and NY makes news because there are lots of people. It is "rare" but it does happen. I think extreme is sort of tied to the media coverage and if they can generate some interest. Extreme is anything they can scare people with I suppose.



I think your point is good that 5% may not be that rare. It is a subjective term

Answer 2

Extreme weather shall be defined as a type of weather condition that is formed up in a surprising way and that brings tremendous destruction to lives property. Take an example, Hurricane Sandy. It was started to be formed up at the Caribbean Sea and it moved on to East of the United States due to the low pressure around there. That was pretty surprising. I would choose the answer as

a) extreme weather is based on an event's climatological distribution and occurs only 5% or less of the time.

Answer 3

It may mean 5% in that there is only a 5% chance that it will happen that year, when talking about hurricanes they usually say things like a hundred year storm in that it usually only happens once in one hundred years that could be a 1% chance of it happening. Also for how many years is the data recorded, currently in the United States in particular there is a large amount of data constantly coming in about weather events that will affect us, data on specifics like hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorm frequency goes back a relatively short period, before 50 years ago there was very minimal data that all relied on witness testimonial. Current technologies are making tracking frequency and magnitude of events much easier which may cause more hysteria because now we know what is happening. For more general data such as how global temperatures might have changed scientists use fossils of animals and trees and the newest data is coming from the ice core samples from

Greenland.

Answer 4

Well you can't call Alarmist extremist idiots. They do have a good spin on the media: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/report/2013/08/19/72445/a-disaster-in-the-making/



Its not a New Norm, but the only thing they promote. They take full advantage of any rare weather event.Almost everybody has the internet, giving Alarmist the means to pass off bogus "BS".



How exciting would it be to say, the weathers normal for this time of year? Wow! a headliner.

Answer 5

Spent the winter on the mountain top.. then spend a summer in southern Texas.

You will find the answer you seek.

Answer 6

Extreme weather is what we have not been having recently.