General Weather Resources

U.S. Weather Research Program
The USWRP is a partnership among NOAA, NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Navy, and the academic and commercial communities. The program's initial focus is on landfalling hurricanes; heavy precipitation and flooding, focusing on the optimal use of data and improved numerical precipitation guidance; and societal and economic impacts.

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Hurricanes

Mapping Coastal Change Hazards
Resource managers must be able to predict where and how much coastal change will occur to locate new construction landward of coastal change hazards. Developing this predictive capability requires quantifying how coasts respond to extreme storms. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists, in partnership with NASA, have developed a new extreme-storm hazards map and a new scale that categorizes expected coastal change (erosion and accretion) that occurs during storms. Both are available on this site.

Coastal Hazards Information Clearinghouse
This site contains a 10-chapter monograph on coastal hazards, detailed coastal hazard maps for all coastal states, photos of property damage from several recent hurricanes, and a list of coastal hazard links for each state.

USGS Hurricanes and Coastal Storm Websites
This site includes links to other USGS sites that provide real-time data, background maps and studies, historical analyses of specific storms, and other reports about hurricanes.

DisasterSafety.org Hurricanes
This site includes videos, publications, and links to information about hurricane mitigation measures.

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Lightning

Lightning-Associated Deaths – United States, 1980-1995
A lightning strike can cause death or various injuries to one or several persons. The mechanism of injury is unique, and the manifestations differ from those of other electrical injuries. In the United States, lightning causes more deaths than do most other natural hazards (e.g., hurricanes and tornadoes), although the incidence of lightning-related deaths have decreased since the 1950s. The cases described in this report illustrate diverse circumstances in which deaths attributable to lightning can occur. This report also summarizes data from the Compressed Mortality File of CDC's National Center for Health Statistics on lightning fatalities in the United States from 1980 through 1995, when 1318 deaths were attributed to lightning.

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