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Please note: Due to browser FTP deprecation, users will no longer be able to access NCEI data via browser FTP clients. Users may access data via NCEI Web Accessible Folders and/or FTP client supported applications. We apologize for any inconvenience. See this document as reference. 

Severe Weather Data

Lightning storm

Lightning is one of the oldest observed natural phenomena on Earth, and it has been seen in volcanic eruptions, extremely intense forest fires, heavy snowstorms, and large hurricanes in addition to thunderstorms

Severe weather is defined as a destructive storm or weather. It is usually applied to local, intense, often damaging storms such as thunderstorms, hail storms, and tornadoes, but it can also describe more widespread events such as tropical systems, blizzards, nor'easters, and derechos.

  • Storm Events Database
    The NCEI Storm Events Database contains various types of storm reports searchable by state, county, date, and event type from 1950 to the present. Data are also available in comma-separated value (CSV) files, as entered by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS). 
  • Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI)
    SWDI includes data from a variety of sources in NCEI's archive. SWDI provides the ability to search through all of these data to find records covering a particular time period and geographic region, and to download the results of your search in a variety of formats. The formats currently supported are Shapefile (for GIS), KMZ (for Google Earth), CSV, and XML.
  • International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS)
    IBTrACS provides tropical cyclone best track data in a centralized location to aid understanding of the distribution, frequency, and intensity of tropical cyclones worldwide.
  • Lightning Products and Services
    Access to verified lightning damage and casualty reports as well as lightning strike data recorded from lightning detection sensors. Derived products include summaries of lightning strikes by county and state as well as gridded lightning strike frequency products in the NetCDF format.