While squall lines can be intense, they tend to pass quickly. Supercells , on the other hand, are long-lived. In fact, they occur for at least one hour.
These highly organized storms feed off an updraft that is tilted and rotation. This updraft can be up to 10 miles in diameter and up to 50, feet tall! You may see the updraft as much as 20 to 60 minutes before a tornado forms. Supercells are where the most violent tornadoes come from. A strongly bowed echo may indicate high winds in the middle of the line, where the storms are moving forward most quickly. Brief tornadoes are likely to occur on the leading edge of a bow echo.
This is a collection of thunderstorms that can spread across an entire state and last more than 12 hours. We use this term to classify any of the following storm types:. Now that you know some basic thunderstorm facts and storm types, it is time we dive into the more meteorological explanations behind thunderstorms. The most basic thing you need to know about thunderstorms is that they have three main ingredients:. Rising, unstable air. Lifting mechanism. All thunderstorms go through stages of growth, development, electrification, and dissipation.
Thunderstorms often develop early in the day when the sun heats the air near the ground. Then pockets of warmer air rise in the atmosphere. When these pockets of air reach a certain level, cumulus clouds form. As things continue to heat up, the clouds grow higher into the atmosphere until they become anvil-shaped. When the cloud grows, precipitation forms within the cloud in the form of ice, hail, and rain.
As these particles bump into one another they become electrically charged. A small positive charge also forms near the bottom on the storm cloud. Then lightning forms. Lightning is the spark of electricity in the atmosphere or between the atmosphere and the ground. Air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. When the differences in charges becomes too great, the air can no longer insulate the charges.
Then there is a rapid discharge of electricity we call lightning. What are the effects of a thunderstorm? There are quite a few conditions that typically accompany thunderstorms. Lightning is the occurrence of a natural electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud.
This violent and sudden electrostatic discharge is accompanied by a bright flash and typically also thunder. There are two types of lightning strikes: in-cloud and cloud-to-ground strikes. Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, on the other hand, do pose a direct threat to people, animals, and equipment outdoors.
Lightning is most dangerous right before a thunderstorm arrives and right after it begins to depart. Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes can and do kill people and animals on the ground. On average, lightning kills about 30 people per year in the United States.
It also causes hundreds of injuries. This threat is far more severe in other parts of the world where lightning detection, outdoor alerting, and severe weather alerts from a national weather agency may not be as commonplace. In India, for example, more than 2, people have died every year since due to lightning strikes.
This is due to a large number of outdoor workers, a lot of lightning activity during the monsoon season, and a lack of alerting systems to keep people safe from lightning. If you do survive a lightning strike, you can suffer a variety of short-term side effects including third-degree burns, Lichtenberg figures, cardiac arrest, ruptured eardrums, and hearing loss. Long-term side effects including vision loss, personality changes, slower reaction times, chronic pain, ringing in your ears, and depression.
Lightning can also cause power outages and start fires. Another common thunderstorm weather condition is hail. Hail is a form of precipitation that occurs when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere where they freeze into balls of ice.
Hail forms when supercooled water drops collide in clouds. Supercooled water will freeze on contact with ice crystals, frozen raindrops, dust, or some other nuclei. Thunderstorms that have a strong updraft keep lifting hailstones up to the top of the cloud where they encounter more supercooled water and continue to grow. If winds are strong enough, hail can even fall at an angle. What would make you feel better? You might snuggle up with mom or dad or even a pet. Imagine your dog or cat was the one who was scared.
You would probably hold your pet close and talk softly. What could you say? It will be over soon. You might encourage your loveable pet to see the upside of a storm. When you're nice and snug indoors, you have a front-row seat to quite a show. Watch the wind bend the trees around and the leaves swirl through the air. And all that lightning and thunder can be better than fireworks on the Fourth of July. You also can do some easy math to figure out how far away the lightning strikes are.
Watch for the flash, then start counting the seconds that pass until you hear the thunder. Divide that number by 5 and you'll have the approximate distance in miles.
This can be helpful because you can follow the progress of the storm as it clears out of your area. If you'd rather not soak up the noise and commotion, you could escape under your headphones and listen to some music. Or take advantage of inside time to play a board game, read a book, or write down what you're thinking and feeling at that very moment. Maybe you'll decide to draw a picture or write a poem about this storm. By the time you do that, you might look outside and notice the skies are brightening.
This storm has passed, just like all of them do. Now what? The third ingredient needed for thunderstorm development is something that will trigger motion in the atmosphere. This may be some sort of boundary such as a front, heating caused by the sun, or cooling aloft. Once a thunderstorm has developed, it will continue to generate boundaries that can trigger additional storms.
In the summer, thunderstorms typically develop in the afternoon when the sun heats air near the ground. If the atmosphere is unstable, bubbles of warm air will rise and produce clouds, precipitation, and eventually lightning. Are thunderstorms dangerous? Yes, despite their small size, all thunderstorms are dangerous. Every thunderstorm produces lightning, which kills more people each year than tornadoes. What is lightning? Lightning is a bright flash of electricity produced by a thunderstorm.
All thunderstorms produce lightning and are very dangerous. If you hear the sound of thunder, then you are in danger from lightning. Lightning kills and injures more people each year than hurricanes or tornadoes; between 75 to people. What causes lightning? Lightning is an electric current.
Within a thundercloud way up in the sky, many small bits of ice frozen raindrops bump into each other as they move around in the air. All of those collisions create an electric charge. After a while, the whole cloud fills up with electrical charges.
The positive charges or protons form at the top of the cloud and the negative charges or electrons form at the bottom of the cloud. Since opposites attract, that causes a positive charge to build up on the ground beneath the cloud. The grounds electrical charge concentrates around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, people, or single trees. The charge coming up from these points eventually connects with a charge reaching down from the clouds and - zap - lightning strikes!
Have you ever rubbed your feet across carpet and then touched a metal door handle? If so, then you know that you can get shocked! Lightning works in the same way. Click Here to see where lightning is currently striking across the U. What causes thunder? Thunder is caused by lightning. When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once then light is gone the air collapses back in and creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder.
The reason we see lightning before we hear thunder is because light travels faster than sound! How do you know if lightning is nearby?
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