I love storms. When the sky is covered with Cumulonimbus clouds, I can't help but feel wonderful, almost as much as those who love the Sun feel when the sun rises for the first time in many days.
If you also like them, you will surely be interested in reading everything that I am going to tell you next. Find out what the storm is, how it forms and much more.
What is the storm?
A storm is a phenomenon characterized by the presence of two or more air masses that are at different temperatures. This thermal contrast causes the atmosphere to become unstable, causing rain, winds, lightning, thunder, lightning and sometimes also hail.
Although scientists define a storm as a cloud that is capable of producing audible thunder, There are other phenomena that are also called as such, which are those that on the earth's surface are associated with rain, ice, hail, electricity, snow, or strong winds which can transport particles in suspension, objects or even living beings.
If we talk about its characteristics, without a doubt we have to talk about the vertically developing clouds that produce. These they can reach an impressive height: from 9 to 17km. That's where the tropopause is located, which is the transition zone between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
The cycle of activity of a storm usually has an initial phase of formation, an intermediate phase of maturity and a final phase of decay that lasts around one or two hours. But generally there are several convective cells that occur simultaneously, so the phenomenon can last up to days.
Sometimes a storm can evolve to supercell state, which is a huge rotating storm. It is capable of producing series of updrafts and downdrafts and abundant precipitation. It is something like the perfect storm . Since it contains several air vortices, that is, wind rotating around a center, it can produce waterspouts and tornadoes.
How is it formed?
So a storm can form a low pressure system needs to be close to a high pressure one. The first will have a low temperature, while the other will be warm. This thermal contrast and other properties of humid air masses originate the development of ascending and descending movements producing effects that we may like or dislike, such as heavy rain or wind, not to mention electric shocks. This shock occurs when the air's breakdown voltage is reached, at which point lightning is generated. From this point on, if conditions are right, lightning and thunder can originate. To better understand this process, you can read about how orographic clouds form.
Types of storm
Although all are formed more or less in the same way, depending on their characteristics we can distinguish several types. The most important are:
Electrical
It is a phenomenon that is characterized by the presence of lightning and thunder, which are the sounds emitted by the first ones. They originate from Cumulonimbus clouds, and are accompanied by strong winds, and sometimes also heavy rain, snow or hail. To delve deeper into this phenomenon, don't miss the largest thunderstorms in the world. Also, if you want to know more about lightning and its formation, This article is for you.
Sand or dust
It is a phenomenon that occurs in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The wind moves a large mass of particles at a speed of more than 40km / h, which can end up on very distant continents. You can read more about this topic in the article dedicated to the sandstorms in Dubai.
Of snow or hail
It is a storm in which water falls in the form of snow or hail. Depending on its intensity, we can speak of weak or severe snowfall. When it is accompanied by gusts of wind and hail, it is called snowfall.
It is a very common phenomenon during winter in high-altitude areas, as frost is common in these regions. For more information on the relationship between these phenomena and storms, you can consult What are green storms?.
Of objects and living beings
It occurs when the wind carries fish or objects, for example, and they end up falling towards the ground. It's the most striking storm of all, and probably one of the ones we'd least like to see. Although it's not common, there are records of unusual objects falling from the sky during these storms. To understand what other phenomena occur in the air, you can read about Cumulonimbus clouds.
Water hoses
They are masses of clouds that rotate rapidly and that descend to the surface of the land, the sea or a lake. There are two types: tornadic, which are tornadoes formed on water or land that later passed into the aqueous medium, or non-tornadic ones. The existence of the former depends on a mesocyclone, which is an air vortex with a diameter of 2 to 10 km that originates within a convective storm and that can cause significant damage with maximum winds of 510 km / h; in the case of the latter, they form under the base of large cumulus clouds and are not as violent (their maximum wind gusts are 116km / h).
Tornadoes
https://youtu.be/TEnbiRTqXUg
They are a mass of air that rotates at high speed whose lower end is in contact with the Earth's surface and the upper end with a cumulonimbus cloudDepending on the speed of rotation and the damage it causes, its maximum wind gusts can be 60-117 km (F0) or up to 512/612 km/h (F6). If you are interested in learning more about the formation of these phenomena, you can consult the article on impressive tornado formations.
