Better protection of humans and the environment requires precise forecasts of extreme weather phenomena, such as winter storms. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now compared methods of statistics and machine learning for forecasts of wind gusts with a view to make the forecasts more accurate and reliable. They found that taking into account geographical information and additional meteorological variables, such as temperature, significantly improves the forecast quality, in particular when using modern AI methods based on neural networks.