Horizontal and vertical air motion and precipitation growth, within a shower

Abstract

Two Doppler radars have been used to measure simultaneously the vertical and horizontal velocity components within an isolated air mass shower. Precipitation growth was found to be restricted to a small region of gently rising air within which the vertical and horizontal air velocities relative to the shower rarely exceeded 1 m sec−1. Ice crystals within the updraught were balanced by it; graupel particles developed during descent through it. The growth rate of the graupel was consistent with a cloud liquid water content about half the adiabatic value. As in many showers studied using Doppler radar, the updraught was restricted to the upper parts of the shower. The descent of the graupel beneath the updraught was associated with weak downdraughts and a local increase in the horizontal winds relative to the shower.

The algorithmic detection of pulse thunderstorms within a large, mostly non‐severe sample

“…The observations collected during the Project are still the most comprehensive available for WFTs despite their age and the antiquated technology that produced them. Although several other research efforts have since revisited WFTs (e.g., Browning et al, ; Lhermitte and Gilet, ; Kropfli and Miller, ; LeMone and Zipser, ; Miller et al, ; Cunning et al, ), these studies were handicapped by the temporal and spatial coarseness to their observations, problems described by Kingsmill and Wakimoto ().…”