Extreme Weather

The article NASA and Hurricanes: Five Fast Facts by Katy Mersmann (6/1/2021) has the answers. The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season starts today, June 1. Our colleagues at NOAA are predicting another active season, with an above average number of named storms. At NASA, we’re developing new technology and missions to study storm formation …

The United States Drought Monitor provides weekly updates of drought in the U.S. Maps such as the one here can be downloaded. For classroom use there is a data page where full data sets can be downloaded including GIS data. There is also an interactive time series graph.

Climate Central provides some graphs and facts related to hurricanes in their article Stronger Hurricanes (9/23/2020).  The graph shows the trend in Atlantic water temperature and here are the related key concepts from the article: Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, known as the Main Development Region for tropical …

The United States Drought Monitor is your source for drought information. Starting with the main graph, copied here, you can select regions and then down to state levels. From the data tab you can select time series graphs, download tabular data by selected region, as well as obtain GIS files. …

The Climate.gov article 2010-2019: A landmark decade of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters by Adam B. Smith (1/8/2020) reports: During 2019, the U.S. experienced a very active year of weather and climate disasters. In total, the U.S. was impacted by 14 separate billion-dollar disasters including: 3 major inland floods, 8 …

The NASA research feature Tropical Cyclones are Stalling More by Kasha Patel (6/619) reports on hurricanes that stall for two days or more near U.S. coasts (graph copied here). In a study published on June 3, 2019, scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed that North …

NOAA has an online tool, Data Tools: Daily Weather Records, that has a summary of daily, monthly, and all time weather records for the last 7, 30, and 365 days, as well as month to date and year to date. For instance, so far this year there have been 12,868 …

The Climate Central post Shifting Tornado Zones (4/24/19) provides a map of changes in the number of tornadoes since 1979 (copied here). Let’s be clear, tornadoes are not going away in the Plains and Upper Midwest, but more have been recorded east of the Mississippi. While there are connections to climate variability modes …