Severe Weather Events Where You Live

What types of severe weather do you have

where you live? Depending on where you live,

you could experience weather that causes

wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, or

floods—or maybe more than one of these!

When we think of severe weather, we usually think of the major natural disaster events such as a flood that covers many neighborhoods or a tornado that causes a lot of damage. Sometimes, a different kind of severe weather occurs more often, but since it produces less damage, we don’t think of it as being as dangerous.

Complete the exercise below to find out what kinds of severe weather events occur most often where you live. Knowing your weather risks will help you and your family prepare and stay safe.

Materials

Computer with access to the internet
paper and pencil/pen to record results

Procedure

1. Access NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Events Database online at: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents

2. Choose the state you live in from the drop-down menu in the “All States and Areas” box. Click on the Search box. For this example, we will choose the state of West Virginia.

3) On the next screen, you can choose several indicators for your search of the common weather events in the area. (See the next screen below.)

a) Choose beginning and ending dates for your search, choosing a span of 20 years to make sure you have enough data to draw conclusions.

b) Choose the county in which you live.

c) Choose event type. For now, choose “All Events” because you want to find out what type of event occurs most often.

(See red arrows for locations of settings for your search.)

Click the Search button.

4. Review the data given in your search results.

5. Scroll down for a list of the weather events that occurred during your search time period.

6. List the types of severe weather that occurs in your area and keep track of how many of each event occurs.

(One easy way to do this is to list the type of event and then put a tally mark next to the event every time it appears in the table.

For example:

Drought ll

Flash flood l

Thunderstorm/Wind lllll

High wind lll

Winter storm l

Heavy Snow 1

Hail ll

(Continue on until you finish the time period you chose.)

Total the numbers of severe weather events for each type.

7. What type of severe weather event occurred most often where you live?

8. What was the least frequent severe weather event?

9. Research different ways you and your family could prepare for the most frequent type of severe weather event in your area. List your preparation suggestions.

Extension

► Repeat the procedure choosing another area of the country that has different types of weather threats. If you live in a southern state, you may want to choose a northern state. If you live in a desert, you may want to choose a coastal state.

Your teacher may assign you a different area to investigate to allow your class to cover as many different weather threats as possible.

1. What area did you investigate?

2. What was the most frequent weather event that happened in this area?

3. How would your preparations for staying safe in a severe weather event be different if you lived in the second area you investigated?