Severe Local Storms Cultural Heritage

Local storms always had a deep impact on people communities, mainly because of the severe damage caused, because of their unpredictability and, up to a few years ago, even because of the lack of knowledge and awareness on their physical origin. Because of this large impact on real life and on imagination, people needed and wanted to describe and report the occurrence of these events, giving them suited names. Often, these nouns are related to the myth developed to explain the cause of the events. In this work, a short presentation and description of the popular nouns used to describe severe local storm events in different areas of the World is given. Countries taken into account span from Italy, moving toward Africa and reaching a few communities of Native Americans. The etymology of the names gives interesting information, useful even under the anthropological point of view, on the Culture and Believes of the peoples who adopted them. This research work is the result of an underground activity carried out in the last ten years by the authors, during their contacts with students and researchers coming from different Countries and mainly met at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste.