Storm's weather-manipulating ability is psionic, and with it she can cause precipitation of moisture in any form, raise or lower temperature and humidity, generate storms of considerable intensity, and create electrical atmospheric phenomena. She can also discharge lightning from her bare hands.While she can manipulate weather patterns, she can't completely alter them, nor she can create atmospheric conditions that can't exist naturally. For example, she can't lower temperatures as far as absolute zero or raise them to solar intensities.
The weather in Storm's inmediate vicinity changes with her emotions. Dark clouds can gather overhead if she's unhappy. (Remember those lightning bolts!) Storm makes every effort to keep her emotions under control, but she's not always successful.
Her powers can be very specifically localized, to the point where she can create a mini-storm to water a potted plant. In addition, she can create atmospheric effects in a beam-like path radiating from her hand. Her control over the atmosphere is so specific and tightly focused that while creating storms over a large region she can select smaller areas within the storm radius and shield them from her own cyclones.
The mutant X-genes that form the basis of all mutants with super powers appears heavily influenced by emotional and/or psychological state of each mutant. Storm was claustrophobic and living in a rural, natural setting where she felt safe for the first time since early childhood. The open sky and the forces of nature were a psychological focal point for her. It might be more than a coincidence that when her powers manifested, they too focused on the open sky and natural forces. It might also be noted that circumstantial evidence suggests that the raw material available to young mutants seems to affect the nature of their powers. Storm didn't have metal around her, as Magneto, Jean Grey and Professor X did. She had a natural setting, and that became the focus of her power.
For Storm to affect weather and cause a wide variety of meteorological phenomena, she must be able to affect air movement, humidity, particulate matter in the atmosphere, and many other factors. One tool at her disposal is the control of wind.
Storm utilizes the wind to carry herself aloft in a form of flight that resembles gliding. She has also used wind to deflect physical attacks. When she's aloft, Storm can literally travel as fast as the wind, and has reached spedds up to 300 miles per hour. Her body automatically adjusts itself to the surrounding temperature although there's a limit to the stress her body can withstand from such changes.
Meteorological changes
Storm produces meteorological effects in seconds. Her psionic abilities allow her to telekinetically move masses of air and moisture. Telekinetic manipulation of atoms and molecules could also heat and electrically charge these masses. Storm's application of psionic forces is different than those of other mutants and requires a specialized understanding of how weather works. For example, Professor Xavier and Jean Grey probably couldn't create a thunderstorm. Though they have strong psionic abilities, they wouldn't know what they needed to apply their powers to. Storm's understanding of the weather seems to be instinctive. Perhaps her unconscious telekinetic probing of meteorological forces has given her this understanding. Or perhaps this information was hard-wired into her genes.
Meteorology
Meteorology is the study of weather. Weather is extremely complex and caused by many factors. As with most sciences, there are a lot of conflicting theories. Some meteorologists say that the movement of the air is the most important factor to consider. Others say that air movement is caused by uneven solar heating, and that that is the main event. Some of the other factors to consider are humidity, precipitation, particulate matter, electrical changes, and cloud cover.
For Storm to affect weather and cause a wide variety of meteorological phenomena, she must be able to affect many or all of these factors. One tool at her disposal is control of wind.
The atmosphere is in constant motion. When air sinks, we have good clear weather and the ai is stable. When air rises, is is unstable and cloudy and murky weather. By generating heat or cold, Storm could cause air to rise or fall. This might imply that she can create cold as Iceman does, which further implies a psionic origin to his power.
Air blows in response to differences in atmospheric pressure and that once air begins to move, the Coriolis force, a physical phenomenon, tends to bend it to the right of its intended path in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.
Wind motions can have a variety of effects on the environment. Wind can make waves in the ocean, which sounds innocent enough, but storm waves can be as tall as buildings and have the force of a large bomb. Wind can also move soil and shaping sand dunes, which, at its most extreme, can turn farmland into a dessert in a few years.
Much weather phenomena is produced at frontal boundaries between air masses. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes are the most extreme examples of this.
All these atmoshperic factors would probably not change, if it weren't for some very basic physical relationships between the Earth and the Sun. These relationships cause uneven heating of the Earth's surface. The Sun doesn't directly heat the air. The atmosphere is actually heated by the Earth's surface.
Weather changes occur daily. The difference in day-and-night-time temperatures is a factor. Weather also changes seasonally because the Earth tilts when it revolves around the sun so that different parts of the globe are always being heated at different times.
Even without considering the axial tilt, the amount of radiation that is absorbed by the Earth is affected by several factors. The Sun's radiation hits the spherical Earth at different places in different angles. The sun is closest at the equator and there the planet gets the full solar dose. North and south of the equator, the surface of the planet curves away from the Sun and things get cooler.
The planet's rotation around the Sun is another factor. The orbit of Earth is not a perfect circle and the speed of our path around the Sun is not always exactly the same. Gravitational pull from other planets in the solar system affects our orbit, even if only slightly.
Heated air expands and cold air contracts. The density of the air increases the force it has to press down on the Earth's surface. This force is measured as air pressure, which has an average of 15 pounds per square inch (psi). Cold air has high pressure (because the air molecules are closer together, making the air heavier) and warm air has low pressure (because the air molecules are farther apart, making the air lighter).
Density and temperature of air generally lessen with height, so the higher you are physically, the less air pressure there will be. However, even at the highest reaches of the atmosphere, in the exosphere, where there is hardly any air, let alone air pressure, there are phenomena associated with the weather.
Not only do air movement and solar heat affect weather but also various gases in the air, which are part of natural chemical and organic cycles. Atmospheric moisture is also a factor. The transformation of water from the gaseous to the liquid or solid state is an important source of energy in many meteorological processes. Clouds can absorb huge amounts of heat and so they are a big factor as well.
Changing any one of the many factors that cause weather can create meteorological events. "Seeding" clouds with particulate matter can force them to condense their moisture into rain. Storm might telekinetically move dust into a cloud formation and trigger rainfall.
Like we said before, much weather phenomena is produced at frontal boundaries between air masses, like hurricanes.
Some meteorologists have considered destroying hurricanes with a drastic change in internal pressure, dropping bombs into the "eyes", or centers of the hurricanes. Storm could use the same technique by creating pressure or removing it via telekinetic manipulation of air masses.
Storm moves masses of dust by means of telekinesis, "seeding" clouds and triggering rainfall. It's reasonable to assume that she not only alters the kinetic power of the winds and temperature of the air and water, but affects the density of air layers and the electrical charge of cloud masses as well.
This is from the book "The Science of the X-Men". It's a great book that X-Plains how mutant powers work. Go buy it!!
It clearly say's storm haves deep root telekinesis. It would have to be seeing that she manipulates weather on that scale.
