Thunderstorms Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Thunders torms are dramatic weather phenomena that may deliver much-needed rain or cooling relief from oppressive heat and humidity, but they are also the makers of dangerous, violent winds, flash floods, damaging hail, and deadly airto-ground lightning. Hundreds of people are killed every year by thunderstorm winds, floods, and lightning. Thunderstorms also destroy property, crops, and significant numbers of livestock every year.

Thunderstorms are formed by rising air that is warm and moist. The warm air currents become strong updrafts that can reach 7-11 miles high. Some storms have updrafts so powerful that the warm moist air reaches the troposphere where the updraft circulation produces hail. The hail may be the size of a marble, an orange, or even a grapefruit. These hail storms may kill people caught in the open and do significant property damage.

Thunderstorms may occur as a single storm; these are usually products of local conditions and may be called air mass or convective thunderstorms. In contrast, frontal thunderstorms are associated with rapidly moving moist air masses that are colliding with cold air masses. When these conditions occur the thunderstorms may occur in clusters or along frontal lines between advancing cold and slowmoving warm air masses.

Most thunderstorms occur in the late afternoon and early evening hours when the heating of the earth’s surface produces the most updrafts. They have three stages to their development. The first is the rising of unstable warm moist air. As the mass of warm air reaches heights of 50,000-80,000 feet the cumulonimbus stage is reached with its anvilshaped head. This is the mature stage, however, as cooling moisture moves out of the updraft and creates downward currents that strike the ground as precipitation. In the final stage the warm upward air drafts are shut off by the descending cold air and the storm ends.

Most single thunderstorms last from a few minutes to over an hour. If a single thunderstorm explodes over a small area and lasts a significant amount of time it may dump great quantities of rain in amounts greater than six inches (18 centimeters or more) in an hour. Thunderstorms producing large amounts of rain in a short period of time can cause flash floods. The western United States is very prone to flash floods caused by thunderstorms. Many people have been killed by flash floods that caught them in a canyon or arroyo that was normally dry. In the Middle East thunderstorms can easily flood the wadis of an area, sweeping away anything in the path of the storm water.

Thunder is caused by electrical discharges between clouds or between clouds and the ground. The electrical charge is visible as lightning. The sound is caused by the lightning breaking the sound barrier as the discharging current superheats the air between the positive and negative contact points for the electrical discharge. Within milliseconds, the air is heated to temperatures of about 18,000 degrees F (10,000 degrees C). Expanding violently, the superheated air forms pressure waves that are audible for up to 15 miles (24 kilometers). The rumbling sound is due to the variations in the sound waves caused by the various parts of the lightning channel.

Some regions of the world, like the western United States, experience dry thunderstorms that do not produce rain because the rain evaporates before it hits the ground. This type of thunderstorm produces lightning that often starts forest fires.

There are about 50,000 thunderstorms occurring on the earth every day. The tropics, where heating of the land and sea occur steadily all year long, are prone to the most thunderstorms. In the Northern and Southern Hemispheres the spring and summer months are the seasons with the greatest numbers of thunderstorms.

Bibliography:

John A. Day and Vincent J. Schaefer, Peterson First Guide to Clouds and Weather (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998);
Ron Holle et , National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Clouds and Storms (Knopf Publishing Group, 1995);
Thomas D. Potter and Bradley R. Colman, , Handbook of Weather, Climate and Water: Dynamics, Climate, Physical Meteorology, Weather Systems, and Measurements (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).