Thunderstorms (TS) are severe weather phenomenon, which develop mainly due to intense convection. These are meso-scale localized atmospheric convective processes associated with heavy rainfall, lightening and thunders, hails and squall lines. The thunderstorms are characterized with stormy winds (60-150 km/hour) and sometimes become more severe and turns into tornadoes. Thunderstorms occur almost everywhere in the world due to atmospheric instability associated with convection and strong moisture convergence. It is one of the most spectacular atmospheric phenomena that affect the lives of the people. It is estimated that at any given instant more than 2000 thunderstorms are taking place around the world (WMO, 1953).
Thunderstorms are very common
…show more content…
In India and Bangladesh, these thunderstorms reach severity when the relatively cooler and dryer continental air mass meets warm and moist air from ocean (STORM, 2005). Over West Bengal and to its east, where the thunderstorms are found to originate is characterized by divergence at 200 mb level in association of strong jet stream. The region of local thunderstorms is in the right entrance region of the jet-stream’s velocity maximum which is an area associated with upper tropospheric divergence that is conducive to widespread thunderstorm outbreaks. The advection of cool air in the middle troposphere over the warm and moist air in the lower level enhances the probability of thunderstorm formation. Ahasan et al. (2014) in a modeling exercise with WRF model have shown clear convergence in lower troposphere and divergence over the upper troposphere at 200 mb. Further to note that vertical wind shears ranging from 12-15 m/s between 1000-500 mb favor developments of Super Cell thunderstorms that are associated with tornadoes (STORM, 2005 and Ahasan et al.,
Appears in Preprints, 18 th AMS Conf. Severe Local Storms (San Francisco, CA), 19-23 February 1996, Amer. Meteor. Soc., 471-473. Typos and other minor problems have been fixed in this Web version.
Supercells tend to be the least common but have the potential to be the most severe. Supercells are isolated from other thunderstorms and can impact area weather from as far away as 32 miles. A squall line is a thunderstorm that forms alongside of a cold front. The squall line contains heavy precipitation, hail, constant lightning, strong straight-line winds, and potentially tornadoes. Strong straight-line winds usually occur when the squall line is in the shape of a bow echo (Wikipedia, 2014). The bow echoes develop within the summer months are commonly known as derechos.
In this paper, I will discuss what tornadoes are and how they form, what different forms of tornadoes there are, what tornado watches and warning are and give examples of tornadoes in Oklahoma and what destruction they caused, also while providing information about the Doppler radar.
In literature, symbolism is used to give meaning to certain things throughout a story that are different than their literal sense. Symbolism also gives the writer freedom to add a deeper meaning to their work. The storm that took place in Kate Chopin’s story, The Storm, is used to symbolize getting Alcee and Calixta back together, the passion between the two of them, and to keep Bobinot and Bibi from returning to the gallery to find Alcee and Calixta.
Tornadoes, also called twisters or cyclones, are a localized, violently destructive windstorm occurring over land, and characterized by a long, funnel-shaped cloud extending toward the ground and made visible by condensation and debris. They come in many different shapes and sizes, but are typical in a funnel formation, where the narrow end makes contact with the earth. Most don’t reach winds over 110 miles per hour (177 km/h) or have a path wider than 250 feet (76m), and most only travel a few miles on ground before dissipating. Although, some can reach winds as high as 300 miles per hour (483 km/h) or higher, have a path that can be as wide as two miles (3.2 km) or more, and can travel for dozens of miles on the ground before dissipating.
From the opening we see that Chopin intends to use the storm to move the
As evening approached, several thunderstorms began to take on the characteristics of a supercell thunderstorm. Supercells, which are intense, broadly rotating thunderstorms, are the most v...
Jump up ^ Galway, Joseph G. (1977). "Some Climatological Aspects of Tornado Outbreaks". Mon. Weather Rev. 105 (4): 477–84. Bibcode:1977MWRv..105..477G. doi:10.1175/1520-0493(1977)105<0477:SCAOTO>2.0.CO;2.
Hurricanes, also known as cyclones or typhoons, are huge, devastating tropical storms that can be up to 600 miles wide. They have strong, forceful winds that spiral inward and upward circling around the “eye” of the storm. Inside the eye, there are clear skies and light winds, however, surrounding the eye wall there are bands of wind and rain that spread out for over hundreds or thousands of miles. Hurricanes begin as tropical disturbances over warm ocean water (27°c or 80°F) and gathers heat and energy as it moves across the ocean. As evaporation from the ocean water increases its power, it changes into a tropical depression (wind speeds of less than 38 mph), then tropical storm (wind speeds of 39-73 mph) to finally a hurricane (wind speeds greater than 75mph). Hurricanes can last two weeks or more over open water and moves about 10-20 miles per hour. The safety of millions of people depends on the meteorologists and their ability to track these storms. Hurricanes may not be dangerous over open water, but are devastating when they hit land. They can cause torrential rains, high winds and storm surges as well as tornadoes, flash floods and land slides. Without warning of these hurricanes approaching, millions could die. The most effective tools meteorologists use are satellite images, radar and aircraft reconnaissance to study and warn people of approaching hurricanes.
People did many things to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. Many people who lived on or near the coastline were given evacuation orders by government officials. These areas were likely to experience severe flooding. The people who lived in low elevations along the coast were particularly in danger. These people left their homes in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; some were fortunate enough to find a hotel to stay in or relatives to stay with. Others who weren’t as fortunate waited in community shelters. Organizations such as the American Red Cross opened shelters specifically for people who had to leave their homes because of Hurricane Sandy.
Image analyst professionals at the U.S. Weather Bureau also found that all cyclones (hurricanes, nor-easters, tornadoes, etc) are characterized by a very distinct vortex cloud pattern located in the center. Because of these mutual characteristics, large scale cloud and weather systems could be easily recognized and tracked for many days. TIROS I detected a storm off the coast of Madagascar and tracked this storm through its television cameras for five consecutive days! Yet another major discovery was that the weather fronts associated with mid-latitude storms are strikingly clear and easily identifiable on weather-satellite photographs.
An ordinary-single cell is the most common, but multicell and supercells are responsible for the severe thunderstorms. The ordinary single-cell thunderstorms are short lived with three stages: the cumulus, the mature, and the dissipating stages. In the last stage, it eliminates the upward supply of high humidity air needed to maintain a thunderstorm. On the other hand, multicell storms are composed of severe individual single-cell storms that can make storms last for several hours. There is dense, cold air of the downdraft that forms the gust front which forms new cells. Then, groups of these thunderstorms tend to join into larger systems referred to as mesoscale convective
A solar storm refers to space weather involving solar activities like solar flares and coronal mass ejection. Although most solar storms may only have minor effect on the Earth, a particularly strong one like the 1859 Carrington Event is likely to cause damage of spacecraft and satellites, as well as radio and electricity blackout of large regions on the Earth. In the age that people’s lives are greatly dependent on electronic and telecommunication technologies, our modern civilization is under a constant threat posed by a hazardous solar storm. This paper will examine a few past solar storm observations and attempt to analyze the effects of the major components of solar storms on human technologies and people’s lives.
A tropical cyclone is a warm-core, low-pressure system producing high winds that spiral counter-clockwise (in the northern hemisphere) and inward, with the highest winds near the center of circulation. The large counter-clockwise and inward flow is characteristic of the nearly symmetric structure of tropical cyclones as they are comprised of rain bands spiraling toward the center. These warm-core storms typically form over the tropical and subtropical oceans and extract their energy from the heat content of the oceans.
A tornado is defined as a violently rotating column extending from a thunderstorm to the ground. The most violent tornadoes are capable of tremendous destruction with wind speeds of two hundred and fifty miles per hour or more. Damage paths can be more than one mile wide and fifty miles long. In an average year, eight hundred tornadoes are reported nationwide, resulting in eighty deaths and over one thousand five hundred injuries. In the body of my essay, I will tell you about types of tornadoes, where tornadoes come from, where and when tornadoes occur, the damage they inflict, variations of tornadoes, and how to detect tornadoes.