Short answers, pulled from the story.
A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. Storms form when a center of low pressure develops with a system of high pressure surrounding it, and that clash of opposing forces creates winds and storm clouds such as cumulonimbus.
A strict meteorological definition of a terrestrial storm is a wind measuring 10 or higher on the Beaufort scale, meaning a wind speed of 24.5 meters per second, 89 kilometers per hour, or 55 miles per hour. Storms can last anywhere from 12 to 200 hours depending on season and geography.
The largest US hailstone fell on the 23rd of July 2010 in Vivian, South Dakota. It measured 8 inches in diameter and 18.62 inches in circumference and weighed 1.93 pounds, breaking earlier records set in Aurora, Nebraska in 2003 and Coffeyville, Kansas in 1970.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations calculated that storms caused 720 billion US dollars of damage between 1991 and 2023. The storm surge is typically the worst effect of a landfalling tropical cyclone, historically causing 90 percent of tropical cyclone deaths.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm larger than Earth that has persisted for at least 340 years, first observed by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Mars has dust storms that can cover the entire planet, including the planet-wide storm found by Mariner 9 when it orbited Mars on the 14th of November 1971.
The 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture near Bermuda inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest of 1611, and a tornado carries Dorothy Gale to Oz in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in Chicago on the 17th of May 1900. In the Bible a giant storm sent by God floods the Earth, and Jesus Christ is recorded calming a storm on the Sea of Galilee.