When severe weather hits the United States, there are ways people across the country can prepare for the potential impact of hail, rain, damaging wind and more.

Tornadoes can take down power for thousands of people, cause catastrophic property damage and kill. The U.S. sees about 1,200 tornadoes each year.

As extreme weather events have hit the world hard in recent years, one meteorology term — atmospheric rivers — has made the leap from scientific circles to common language, particularly in places that have been hit by them.

That stands to reason.

Climate change is already causing all sorts of problems on Earth, but soon it will be making a mess in orbit around the planet too, a new study finds.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated that as global warming caused by burning of coal, oil, gas continues, it may reduce the available space for satellites in low Earth orbit by anywhere from one-third to 82% by the end of the century, depending on how much carbon pollution is spewed. That's because space will become more littered with debris as climate change lessens nature's way of cleaning it up.

Most of the world has dirty air, with just 17% of cities globally meeting air pollution guidelines, a report Tuesday found.

Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir analyzed data from 40,000 air quality monitoring stations in 138 countries and found that Chad, Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India had the dirtiest air. India had six of the nine most polluted cities with the industrial town of Byrnihat in northeastern India the worst.

A potent storm system is expected to pour heavy rain on western states later this week before rumbling into the central United States, where it could spawn tornadoes in the South and dump heavy snow across the parts of the Great Plains and Upper Midwest, creating blizzard conditions.

The ominous forecast comes as temperatures hit record highs in parts of the central U.S. after an active few days of weather across the nation. A possible tornado touched down in central Florida on Monday morning, tearing past a local television news station as its meteorologists were live on the air. No injuries were reported.

Australia's prime minister cautioned that the fallout from a vicious tropical storm over the weekend was "far from over" as parts of two states remained inundated with perilous floodwaters on Monday, even as the initial threat from the deluge continued to recede.

One person was killed and several others injured after heavy rain lashed Australia's east coast on Saturday, toppling trees and power lines and inundating some parts of Queensland and New South Wales with record downpours. The two states escaped the level of chaos forecast from the tropical low weather system, which was earlier expected to make landfall as the first tropical cyclone to hit south east Queensland in 51 years — before weakening as it approached.

Heavy rains that flooded a city on Argentina's east coast in recent days have killed at least 16 people, officials said Sunday.

Rescue teams were searching for dozens of others reported missing, including two girls and two adults. Authorities said they were swept away by floodwaters unleashed by rains that began pelting the city of Bahía Blanca on Friday.

America's butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds.

The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science.

Five cities in southern Brazil suspended classes Thursday due to a heat wave, authorities said, as temperatures in some places rose as high as 36 degrees Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit).

Rio Grande, one of the five cities — all of which are in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul — said its schools were not equipped to handle the extreme heat. Classes were expected to resume on Monday.

The U.S. government will stop sharing air quality data gathered from its embassies and consulates, worrying local scientists and experts who say the effort was vital to monitor global air quality and improve public health.

In response to an inquiry from The Associated Press, the State Department said Wednesday that its air quality monitoring program would no longer transmit air pollution data from embassies and consulates to the Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow app and other platforms, which allowed locals in various countries, along with scientists around the globe, to see and analyze air quality in cities around the world.