Three Stages of Thunderstorm Formation Essay -- Exploratory Essays Res

Three Stages of Thunderstorm Formation The kind of thunderstorms that produce our summer rains are called ordinary thunderstorms, or air mass thunderstorms. They form when warm, humid air rises in an unstable atmosphere. Warm air cools down as it rises, and once it becomes colder than the air around it, it will begin to fall back down. In an unstable atmosphere, the temperature of the surrounding air decreases faster with height than the temperature of the rising warm air. This causes the warm, moist air to continually be warmer than the atmosphere, and continue rising to large heights. When this happens, we have the basis for a thunderstorm. Thunderstorm formation occurs in three stages - the cumulus stage, the mature stage, and the dissipating stage. The updraft of humid, warm air into the atmosphere starts the cumulus stage. The air cools as it rises and condenses into one cumulus (small puffy) cloud, or cluster of cumulus clouds. At first, these clouds cannot get very tall because the air surrounding the cloud is very dry, and causes the water droplets to evaporate quick...