Mother left party, precipitating breakdown (11)
I believe the answer is:
malfunction
'precipitating breakdown' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to natural events as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'mother left party' is the wordplay.
'mother' becomes 'ma' (Ma is another word for mother or mum).
'left' becomes 'l' (common abbreviation).
'party' becomes 'function' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ma'+'l'+'function'='MALFUNCTION'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for malfunction that I've seen before include "Fail" , "Break down" , "Go wrong" , "Failure (of equipment)" .)