Weather Explainers

Weather Words: Parade Of Storms

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When you hear the word "parade," you probably think of marching bands. For me, a Louisiana native, it’s Mardi Gras and the colorful floats and beads flying through the air. But in meteorology, a "parade of storms" is a very different spectacle - one that Mother Nature orchestrates with relentless waves of severe storms, hurricanes or even winter storms.

This image shows the Atlantic Basin during an active period of hurricane season, when a parade of storms were lined up all relatively heading in the same direction.

A parade of storms is more of a slang term meteorologists will use to describe when one storm system after another follows the same track, often due to a persistent jet stream pattern. Just like the carefully planned routes of Mardi Gras parades, these storms march in formation, rolling through one after the other. Sometimes, the storms are spaced just far enough apart to give a brief break before the next one arrives, other times, the storms come in rapid succession, leaving little time to recover before the next wave hits.

Many times in weather, we will get “stuck” in a weather pattern. With persistent features in the atmosphere, like the jet stream or a stubborn area of high pressure that won’t budge. These features can lead to storms hitting the same area more than once, and provide rounds of the same weather week after week. We see this most often with storm tracks in the spring and fall, and even winter storm tracks. We also get stuck in these patterns along the West Coast when atmospheric rivers bring rounds of relentless rain. During the summer, it’s not uncommon for several tropical systems to be lined up in the Atlantic, which you may hear a meteorologist refer to as a “parade of storms”.

So, whether you're catching beads or catching raindrops, it's always good to stay weather-aware. While some parades bring joy and celebration, others bring storms, but at least one of them comes with king cake!

Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.

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