Weather with AttitudeWeather with Attitude
If you reached this section via my other weather page, then to return there
close this window, to avoid problems with the frames appearing inside frames.
Otherwise have a look for it under Links at www.taskfinder.com
Why not visit my other main site at www.sky-web.net
as well.
This part of the site covers Weather with Attitude, but what exactly does that mean?
Well, there are some sorts of weather that you just don't mess around with. It takes no prisoners, and gives no mercy. Extreme weather. Weather like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, lightning, ice ages, that sort of thing. Weather that can re-locate your house for you. Weather with a BAD attitude to be exact. And there are quite a few web sites out there which show that this sort of thing fascinates many people, as a search on "extreme weather" or "severe weather" soon reveals. There are sites devoted to lightning photography with stunning images, and stormchasers sites. Yes, there are people who drive around following tornadoes, just like in the movie Twister, only most of them are trying to get some good photographs of these awesome beasts. The hit counters on some of these sites can run to over 500,000 for the better ones! So it's not just me that finds them fascinating. This was going to be just another section at the bottom of my main weather page, but it got a bit large and deserved a page to itself. As with all my links, they are annotated links, so you know what to expect when you visit them.
 |
 |
 |
If you do a search on severe weather, many of the places that come up are forecasting sites which issue weather warnings. Some countries just get more than their fair share of interesting weather, and warnings are so important that sites exist just to cover the warnings, and discuss the correct things to do in an emergency. Certain areas of America, Australia and India have the misfortune to be in the path of the storms from the local ocean, and to these people, the information is vital. I've steered clear of sites that just issue weather warnings, and gone for those that explain the nature of the problem or include good pictures or even movies. The individual topics each have their own section as well, shown in the menu section above.
BBC Weather Features is part of the vast BBC site and includes 'featured' weather specials - just think how pleased a particular weather phenomenon must be to have a BBC Feature written about it! There are many interesting articles accessible from the index page whose link I've given - they were giving hurricanes the honour the day I dropped in. They also have an A - Z of weather that is gradually expnding and has interesting links to Weather with Attitude topics, as well as other, somewhat tamer weather. Try clicking on the BBC's Weatherwise menu link then Fact files, and you get some stuff on a variety of extreme weather as well.
NOAA Home Page, What would a weather page be without a link of some sort to a NOAA site! This is a good starting point on any weather topic, and should be compulsary viewing.
NOAA Photo Library - This one is to their photo library, and as a nice touch, you are permitted to use these images as long as you say they are NOAA copyright.
National Severe Storm Laboratory Collection also have good piccies you can use if you acknowledge them.
NOAA Weather This is their main weather page and you should definately check out their HOT topics list, on the right hand side of the page. They have lots sub-sections that could appear in many parts of the Weather with Attitude listings. But discoverying them for yourself is part of the fun.
Severe weather is a part of a US radio station site (WRAL) with some interesting Flash animations of Weather with Attitude. Hail, lightning, and tornadoes are included. If you thought hailstones were just a bit of a minor annoyance, have a closer look, especially at the slide show. There are slide shows for each topic in fact and all are entertaining. The Flash animations can make the site slow loading if you don't have a broadband connection, but it 's worth the wait.
Severe Weather is also the name used for one student's school project on the subject and covers storms, hurricanes and tornadoes, (although some of its external links were expired). For a school project, it's a good effort, but he did spend 8 months on it gathering information.
Severe Weather USA covers a variety of topics including severe weather photos, cloud types (nice images), tornadoes, hurricanes, hailstorms, death rates (US storms), weather videos and more. Some of the pages are a bit heavy on text, but overall it's a reasonable site. One or two of the animated gifs used are very large and you may get the impression they are broken links.
Australian Severe Weather covers weather photography, storms, cyclones, tornadoes, some weather videos and has an online book on observing the weather. It is a sister site to Stormguy's site mentioned under the Lightning section.
Wild World Weather is yet another Aussie site (the Aussies and the Americans do seem to get a fair share of the more extreme weather), mainly links to photos, and unfortunately an annoying casino advert keeps cropping up. But under Historical Reports you can have a look at Tracy and what she got up to!
Severewx.co.uk is a UK site along the same lines as the similarly named US site (below). It covers storms and lightning and is regularly updated by Matt Capper of the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) Executive. It has an obvious UK slant, but includes links to international sites, and educational sites as well.
Severewx.com has a lot to look at including photos, weather science, weather links, and a series of online presentations on several subjects concerning Weather with Attitude.
Everything Weather is strongly related to severwx.com above and the links often take you to the same places, but with a nice menu on the left hand edge to use. Their webmasters are trying to set up a network of sites, each concentrating on some part of their service but all linked together. Both are US sites.
Weatherpix is an excellent source of many stunning photos on many aspects of severe weather, all from a dedicated storm chaser, as well as having some good advice on taking your own storm and lightning pictures.
USAToday has a large site with a large number of interesting articles on both weather in general and Weather with Attitude. Start on their USAToday Weather page, or click on the weather link on their home page. Once here, explore their links to Cold Science (for stuff on the Arctic and its weather), Weather basics (for a huge list of articles on the weather in general and some with attitude problems), Hurricanes, Severe storms (a bit obvious what the last two are on, isn't it). There really is a lot of interesting reading and photos here, and it can keep you occupied for quite a while. I spent quite some time here after I'd added it to this section, and have gone back to it several times.
Tornadoes and other severe weather is just one part of a large Natural Hazards web site - you might have some fun navigating around this site. Lots of links to several places not listed here. Well, why should I do all the work for you? Like me, they give annotated links so you know what to expect from a site you are about to jump to.
The Natural Hazards Center is the home page of the above site and can be a good starting point for examining other risky bits of nature.
Tornado & Severe Weather is a similar site with good links, although not annotated.
Tornado Chase Day covers not just tornadoes, but hail, lightning, high winds, good photos, and their link page is particularly good, as is the whole site in general.
Sam Barricklow's Storm Chase has a lot of stuff on all the usual Weather with Attitude topics (and a menu in small print that you might miss, and a large animated gif of a lightning shrike on one page that might make you think it was a broken link).
StormStock claims to be the world's premier storm footage supplier to the TV and movie industry, with clients like Discovery Channel, BBC, National Geographic, and Hollywood film makers! And they have some samples available for you to view! They specialise is tracking violent thunderstorms, tornadoes and hurricanes to produce the background weather scenes you see in the movies.
The Why Files was a new site to me, and it is an excellent educational resource on a huge number of topics. They cover hurricanes, lightning, snow, tsunami, volcanoes and a lot of other things. I can recomend visiting this site if you need to learn about Weather with Attitude or any other vaguely scientific subject. It's in plain english, not overladen with jargon, and is a great reference site. I've given the link to their search engine, which covers their site only, to give you easy access to their articles. The first article listed after a search is usually the beginning of the series on a topic. Go totheir hurricane section and watch the video of a house falling into the sea after a storm! I've not found many other links to this site yet except on online magazines, which is strange. Because like the better known HowStuffWorks site, it is very good.