In this paper, a nonorthogonal locally 1-D finite difference time-domain (LOD-NFDTD) method is presented for electromagnetic (EM) scattering involving curvilinear coordinate system. Formulations of scattered field and convolutional perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition in generalized nonorthogonal grids for LOD-NFDTD are also presented. The nonorthogonal grids are used to fully mesh the computational domain which leads to efficient computation. Moreover, the proposed technique requires fewer arithmetic operations than the alternating direction implicit NFDTD method leading to a reduction of CPU time. The numerical dispersion of the proposed method as a function of Courant-friedrich-lewy number (CFLN) is also presented. Computational results for EM scattering from 2-D conducting, dielectric, and coated cylinders as well as overfilled dielectric and bent cavity structures are presented.