Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Drafts can also be caused by low or high pressure regions. A low pressure region will attract air from the surrounding area, which will move towards the center and then rise, creating an updraft. A high pressure region will attract air from the surrounding area, which will move towards the center and sink, spawning a downdraft.
As the updraft intensifies, it creates an area of low pressure at the surface. This pulls the focused mesocyclone down, in the form of a visible condensation funnel. As the funnel descends, the RFD also reaches the ground, creating a gust front that can cause severe damage a good distance from the tornado.
A supercell is a thunderstorm characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone, a deep, persistently rotating updraft. [1] Due to this, these storms are sometimes referred to as rotating thunderstorms. [2] Of the four classifications of thunderstorms (supercell, squall line, multi-cell, and single-cell), supercells are the overall least common ...
A mesocyclone is a meso-gamma mesoscale (or storm scale) region of rotation (vortex), typically around 2 to 6 mi (3.2 to 9.7 km) in diameter, most often noticed on radar within thunderstorms. In the northern hemisphere it is usually located in the right rear flank (back edge with respect to direction of movement) of a supercell, or often on the ...
The air tends to rise in an updraft through the process of convection (hence the term convective precipitation). This creates a low-pressure zone beneath the forming thunderstorm, otherwise known as a cumulonimbus cloud. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 5×10 8 kg of water vapor is lifted into the Earth's atmosphere.
As the updraft intensifies, it creates an area of low pressure at the surface. This pulls the focused mesocyclone down, in the form of a visible condensation funnel. As the funnel descends, the RFD also reaches the ground, fanning outward and creating a gust front that can cause severe damage a considerable distance from the tornado.
The red line is temperature, the green line is the dew point, and the black line is the air parcel lifted. In meteorology, convective available potential energy (commonly abbreviated as CAPE), [1] is a measure of the capacity of the atmosphere to support upward air movement that can lead to cloud formation and storms.
A mesovortex is a small-scale rotational feature found in a convective storm, such as a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS, i.e. squall line), a supercell, or the eyewall of a tropical cyclone. [1][2] Mesovortices range in diameter from tens of miles to a mile or less [3] and can be immensely intense.