Abstract: Thunderstorm is one kind of extreme weathers with heavy precipitation, damaging wind, hail, especially as well as lightning.Thunderstorms may be harm to industry, agriculture, even lives of human being, and therefore it is essential to study on methods of early-warning and forecasting for thunderstorms nowadays, basic theories, technologies and applications in this field have been evidently developed.In this paper, recent advances in early-warning and forecasting of thunderstorms are reviewed and some key issues about the topic in previous studies are discussed.All of the previous researches are classified into four aspects:the potential predictability of thunderstorms, nowcasting of thunderstorms, the application of lightning information in thunderstorm prediction, the development of numerical models in thunderclouds.Further more, the problems and major achievements of researches are summarized.On the basis of above, aspects which need to be improved further have been analyzed, and the trend of research on the topic also prospected.