* Update Frequency: Weekly Data from this dataset can be downloaded/accessed through this dataset page and Kaggle's [API](https://github.com/Kaggle/kaggle-api). Context 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. The Severe Weather Data Inventory (SWDI) is an integrated database of severe weather records for the United States. The records in SWDI come from a variety of sources in the NCDC 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 (comma-separated), and XML. Content The current data layers in SWDI are: - Filtered Storm Cells (Max Reflectivity >= 45 dBZ) from NEXRAD (Level-III Storm Structure Product) - All Storm Cells from NEXRAD (Level-III Storm Structure Product) - Filtered Hail Signatures (Max Size > 0 and Probability = 100%) from NEXRAD (Level-III Hail Product) - All Hail Signatures from NEXRAD (Level-III Hail Product) - Mesocyclone Signatures from NEXRAD (Level-III Meso Product) - Digital Mesocyclone Detection Algorithm from NEXRAD (Level-III MDA Product) - Tornado Signatures from NEXRAD (Level-III TVS Product) - Preliminary Local Storm Reports from the NOAA National Weather Service - Lightning Strikes from Vaisala NLDN **Disclaimer:** SWDI provides a uniform way to access data from a variety of sources, but it does not provide any additional quality control beyond the processing which took place when the data were archived. The data sources in SWDI will not provide complete severe weather coverage of a geographic region or time period, due to a number of factors (eg, reports for a location or time period not provided to NOAA). The absence of SWDI data for a particular location and time should not be interpreted as an indication that no severe weather occurred at that time and location. Furthermore, much of the data in SWDI is automatically derived from radar data and represents probable conditions for an event, rather than a confirmed occurrence. Acknowledgements Dataset Source: NOAA. This dataset is publicly available for anyone to use under the following terms provided by the Dataset Source — http://www.data.gov/privacy-policy#data_policy — and is provided "AS IS" without any warranty, express or implied, from Google. Google disclaims all liability for any damages, direct or indirect, resulting from the use of the dataset. [Cover photo](https://unsplash.com/photos/i9w4Uy1pU-s) by [NASA](https://unsplash.com/@nasa) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/) _Unsplash Images are distributed under a unique [Unsplash License](https://unsplash.com/license)._