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The two major ways thunderstorms move are via advection of the wind and propagation along outflow boundaries towards sources of greater heat and moisture. Many thunderstorms move with the mean wind speed through the Earth's troposphere, the lowest 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) of the Earth's atmosphere. Weaker thunderstorms are steered by winds closer ...
Squall line. A squall line, or more accurately a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS), is a line of thunderstorms, often forming along or ahead of a cold front. In the early 20th century, the term was used as a synonym for cold front (which often are accompanied by abrupt and gusty wind shifts). Linear thunderstorm structures often contain ...
A lightning strike or lightning bolt is a lightning event in which the electric discharge takes place between the atmosphere and the ground. Most originate in a cumulonimbus cloud and terminate on the ground, called cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning. A less common type of strike, ground-to-cloud (GC) lightning, is upward-propagating lightning ...
Lightning is a natural phenomenon formed by electrostatic discharges through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions, either both in the atmosphere or one in the atmosphere and one on the ground, temporarily neutralizing these in a near-instantaneous release of an average of between 200 megajoules and 7 gigajoules of energy ...
A supercell with a hail core near Stratford, Texas on May 18, 2023. 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 ...
Cumulonimbus (from Latin cumulus 'swell' and nimbus 'cloud') is a dense, towering, vertical cloud, [1] typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents. Above the lower portions of the cumulonimbus the water vapor becomes ice crystals, such as snow and graupel ...
A multicellular thunderstorm cluster is a thunderstorm that is composed of multiple convective cells, each being at a different stage in the life cycle of a thunderstorm. It appears as several anvils clustered together. A cell is an updraft/downdraft couplet. These different cells will dissipate as new cells form and continue the life of the ...
Outflow boundary on radar with radial velocity and frontal boundary drawn in.. An outflow boundary, also known as a gust front, is a storm-scale or mesoscale boundary separating thunderstorm-cooled air from the surrounding air; similar in effect to a cold front, with passage marked by a wind shift and usually a drop in temperature and a related pressure jump.