Transcript • Severe weather • Weather that can cause property damage and death • Thunderstorms • Small, intense weather systems that produce strong winds, heavy rains, lightning.

• Severe weather
• Weather that can cause property
damage and death
• Thunderstorms
• Small, intense weather systems
that produce strong winds, heavy
rains, lightning and thunder
– Occur @ cold fronts
– Earth’s surface air = warm, moist
– Unstable air masses
• Warm air rises
• Cool & condenses to clouds
– Cumulus clouds
– Really unstable – cumulonimbus=
thunderstorm
Thunderstorm Facts
• Lightning
• A large electrical discharge that
occurs between 2 oppositely
charged surfaces
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•
• Thunder
• Severe
thunderstorms
Lightning Strike Chart
Types of Lightning
• The sound that results from the
rapid expansion of air along the
lightning strike
• Produce one or more of the
following conditions:
– High winds, hail, flash floods,
tornadoes
– Are very damaging and can cost
millions
– Sometimes even lives are lost
• Hurricanes
• Large rotating tropical weather
systems w/wind speeds of at least
119 km/h
– Occur between 5°-20° N & S latitude
– Needs warm, moist air to survive/grow
– Starts as a thunderstorm
• Winds move in 2 directions & a rotation
• Eye
– Calm
– center of storm
– ½ through
• Eye wall
– group of cumulonimbus clouds that
produce heavy rain & winds
• Rain bands
– beyond eye wall
– spirals of rain around the storm
• Tornadoes
• Small, rotating columns of air
that have high wind speeds &
low central pressure
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Must touch ground
75% happen in U.S.
Spring/early summer
Cold/dry Canadian Air meets
warm, moist Tropical air
• NOAA Tornado Guide
• Greensburg Kansas Pics