By Chris Nowotarski, Texas A&M University

(THE CONVERSATION) Windstorms can seem like they come out of nowhere, hitting with a sudden blast. They might be hundreds of miles long, stretching over several states, or just in your neighborhood.

The enormous blue cone slowly crushes tiny piles of sand that represent houses. It symbolizes the deadly havoc wrought by floods that ravaged Spain's eastern Valencia five months ago.

The artwork is one of hundreds of wood and papier-maché sculptures that are painstakingly crafted — and then burned — when Las Fallas, the most important yearly celebration in Valencia, reaches its climax on Wednesday night.

Flash floods unleashed by heavy rains promoted officials in southern Spain to evacuate over 350 homes, shut down roads and cancel classes on Tuesday.

Regional officials ordered the evacuation of 365 homes in the village of Campanillas near Malaga city late on Monday after a nearby river burst its banks. The evacuees spent the night in a municipal sports hall.

With Oklahomans still reeling from deadly wildfires that whipped across the state and destroyed hundreds of homes in recent days, authorities warned that Tuesday would bring a renewed risk of fire to an area spanning from western Oklahoma through the Texas Panhandle and into southeastern New Mexico.

More than 400 homes were severely damaged or destroyed in the outbreak of wildfires that started Friday in Oklahoma. At least four people died due to the fires or high winds, including a person killed in a vehicle accident as a result of poor visibility due to dust or smoke, officials said.

A dynamic storm that prompted foreboding predictions of dangerous weekend weather spawned tornadoes, dust storms and wildfires that killed at least 39 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.

The weakening but still volatile weather system was moving Monday into the U.S. Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, bringing thunderstorms, hail, damaging winds and the potential for more tornadoes.

A huge storm system crossing the U.S. threatens to unleash tornadoes Friday in the Mississippi Valley, blizzards in the northern Plains and dry, gusty conditions in Texas and Oklahoma that pose a high risk of wildfires.

The National Weather Service predicted extreme weather across a vast swath of the U.S. with a population exceeding 100 million people. Powerful winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were forecast from the Canadian line to the Rio Grande border with Mexico.

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.