Appearance of awful famine at local HQ (13)
I believe the answer is:
manifestation
'appearance' is the definition.
(I know that manifestation is a type of appearance)
'awful famine at local hq' is the wordplay.
'awful' indicates anagramming the letters.
'at' says to put letters next to each other.
'local hq' becomes 'station' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'famine' anagrammed gives 'manife'.
'manife'+'station'='MANIFESTATION'
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for manifestation that I've seen before include "Sign" , "Demonstration" , "Appearance of a ghost" , "Symptom (of an ailment)" , "Display" .)