Severe Weather — Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

Severe Weather

Severe weather refers to any dangerous meteorological event with the potential to cause property damage, serious social disruption, or loss of life. Thunderstorms are among the most common forms of severe weather. They form when warm, moist air rises rapidly, cools, and condenses into towering cumulonimbus clouds. Inside these clouds, collisions between ice crystals and water droplets separate electrical charges, eventually building up enough to discharge as lightning. Thunder is the sound produced by the rapid expansion of air superheated by a lightning bolt. A single thunderstorm can produce dozens of lightning strikes per minute, hail, strong gusty winds, and flash floods.

Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground. They form most often in the central United States — a region called Tornado Alley — where warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with cold, dry air from Canada. When wind speed and direction change rapidly with altitude (a condition called wind shear), it can cause rotating thunderstorms called supercells. If the rotation tightens and extends to the ground, a tornado forms. Tornado winds can reach over 300 miles per hour in the most violent storms, and a large tornado can be over a mile wide.

Winter storms pose their own severe weather hazards. Blizzards combine heavy snow, strong winds, and low visibility. Ice storms coat everything in a layer of freezing rain that can snap tree branches, bring down power lines, and make roads treacherous. Nor’easters are powerful storms that track along the eastern coast of North America, bringing fierce winds and heavy precipitation — snow in winter, rain in summer. In the northern Great Plains, blizzards can arrive quickly and produce life-threatening whiteout conditions that have historically been deadly to livestock and travelers caught in the open.

Heat waves are prolonged periods of excessively hot weather, often accompanied by high humidity. They are the deadliest type of severe weather in the United States, killing more people on average each year than tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes combined. Heat stress occurs when the body cannot cool itself effectively; heat exhaustion and heat stroke can set in rapidly, especially in elderly people, young children, and those without access to air conditioning. Staying informed through weather alerts, having an emergency plan, seeking shelter during tornadoes, and avoiding outdoor activities during extreme heat are all key components of severe weather safety.

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