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Category Archives: Severe Weather
What is Tornado Alley?
A tornado is a powerful column of winds that rotate around a center of low pressure. The winds inside a tornado spiral inward and upward, often exceeding speeds of 300 mph. Tornadoes form in atmospheres that have extremely unstable moist air, large amounts of vertical wind shear and weather systems, such as fronts or thunderstorms, that force air upward.
The continental United States provides these three ingredients in abundance. Continue reading
Do thunderstorms cause milk to spoil?
No, but it was once widely thought that summertime thunderstorms could cause fresh milk to curdle.
This thinking was based on observations that raw milk would spoil during lightning and thunderstorms. But it was neither the thunderstorms nor lightning that caused the spoiling; rather it was the atmospheric conditions. The conditions that are optimum for thunderstorm development are the same as those that would cause milk to spoil. Continue reading
Are thunderstorm rain amounts hard to predict?
Meteorologists would generally agree that summer is the most challenging time of year for making accurate rain forecasts.
During summer, there generally is enough moisture and atmospheric instability to help fuel the development of rain showers. Scattered thunderstorms are one of the most difficult weather events to forecast. Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Severe Weather
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What is a heat dome?
“Heat dome” is a term used by the news media to explain extreme heat conditions across large geographic regions.
The American Meteorological Society maintains a glossary of meteorological terms and added the term “heat dome” and this definition in March 2022: “An exceptionally hot air mass that develops when high pressure aloft prevents warm air below from rising, thus trapping the warm air as if it were in a dome.” Continue reading
What is the largest hailstone on record?
A hailstone was found in Vigo Park, Texas, on June 2 that measured 7ΒΌ inches in diameter.
However, that is not the record size hailstone for the U.S. That prize stone fell on July 23, 2010, near Vivian, South Dakota. It was 8 inches in diameter and weighed just over 1.9 pounds. The official record hailstone for Wisconsin fell in Wausau in 1921 and measured 5.7 inches. The world’s heaviest hailstone weighed 2.25 pounds and fell in Bangladesh in April 1986. Its diameter was not recorded. Continue reading
