Weather Words: Training

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When you hear the word “training” in terms of weather, don’t think of it as training for a marathon, but rather train cars on a rail line. Sometimes storms can mimic train cars by following the same path one after another. This can easily set up a very dangerous flash flooding situation.

There are times when heavy downpours come down with rainfall rates of several inches an hour. If storms are training, then this can last for several hours or more. That’s when flash flooding and river flooding often can occur.

Urban areas are especially vulnerable to flooding from training storms. For one, there is so much concrete, water has very few places to drain and many times drainage systems aren’t able to handle the amount of water flooding into the streets.

J​ennifer 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.