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This rotating updraft is known as a mesocyclone. [8] For a tornado to form in this manner, a rear-flank downdraft enters the center of the mesocyclone from the back. Cold air, being denser than warm air, is able to penetrate the updraft. The combination of the updraft and downdraft completes the development of a tornado.
A mesocyclone from the Greensburg, Kansas tornado indicated on Doppler weather radar.. A mesocyclone is a type of mesovortex, approximately 1 to 10 km (0.6 to 6 mi) in diameter (the mesoscale of meteorology), within a convective storm. [6]
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air in contact with the surface and a cumuliform cloud base. Tornado formation is caused by the stretching and aggregating/merging of environmental and/or storm-induced vorticity that tightens into an intense vortex. There are various ways this may come about and thus various forms and sub-forms of ...
These are especially dangerous storms, since the mesocyclone is wrapped with rain and can hide a tornado (if present) from view. These storms also cause flooding due to heavy rain, damaging downbursts , and weak tornadoes, although they are also known to produce strong to violent tornadoes.
Landspout is a term created by atmospheric scientist Howard B. Bluestein in 1985 for a tornado not associated with a mesocyclone. [3] The Glossary of Meteorology defines a landspout: "Colloquial expression describing tornadoes occurring with a parent cloud in its growth stage and with its vorticity originating in the boundary layer .
A tornado watch is typically less severe than a tornado warning and encompasses a larger area like multiple counties and states. It serves as a signal for people to prepare in case of an emergency.
The rear flank downdraft can arise owing to negative buoyancy, which can be generated by cold anomalies produced at the rear of the supercell thunderstorm by evaporative cooling of precipitation or hail melting, or injection of dry and cooler air in the cloud, and by vertical perturbation pressure gradients that can arise from vertical gradients of vertical vorticity, stagnation of ...
Strong mesocyclone on a thunderstorm near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that was analyzed as fitting the characteristics of a TVS.It was associated with a tornado.. A tornadic vortex signature, abbreviated TVS, is a Pulse-Doppler radar weather radar detected rotation algorithm that indicates the likely presence of a strong mesocyclone that is in some stage of tornadogenesis. [1]