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Thunderstorms at Night

GaugeNeeded

GaugeNeeded

Carolina MAGTF
So, I have a night checkride tonight and I am watching thunderstorms pop up at night?!?! I know mother nature isn't bound by any rules, but I thought the sun is the engine that helps thunderstorms? I thought the sun destabilizes the air mass during the heating of the day to aid vertical development and so on. What causes thunderstorms to form at night? Shouldn't the air mass stabilize at night? If this is a dumb question, I apologize and Mods feel free to lock me up. I'm just trying to learn while the thunderstorm passes the airfield.
 
One thunderstorm has been going for several hours. The other three formed an hour after sunset. Shouldn't the setting sun put a cap on the vertical development?
 
GaugeNeeded said:
One thunderstorm has been going for several hours. The other three formed an hour after sunset. Shouldn't the setting sun put a cap on the vertical development?
Click to expand...

Surface heating is just one of several reasons that an unstable airmass will develop vertically into CBs. Orographic lifting and frontal boundaries can also produce thunderstorms.

Brett
 
Having made my living the past 21 years flying at night I can tell you thunderstorms do lurk out there. Frontal activity being the major culprit it seems. I check nexrad sites and that gives me a heads up as to which way to deviate/fly if I'm getting ready to launch and the boomers are close by.
ATC will tell you which way everyone is deviating and what their(ATCs) radar shows but they'll usually give you the reminder that they don't assume responsibility for weather avoidance.
 
plc67 said:
I check nexrad sites and that gives me a heads up as to which way to deviate/fly if I'm getting ready to launch and the boomers are close by.
Click to expand...

Speaking of NEXRAD, by far my favorite radar site on the web is run by Weather Underground. There are all sorts of options you can play with (including varying the elevation angle of the scan, using automated storm cell tracking, getting all the gee-whiz independent variables associated with a given cell - like vertically integrated liquid, chance of hail, etc.). Easy to kill a lot of time on this site when storms are rolling through your area:

http://www.wunderground.com/radar/r...ntery=168&lightning=1&showlabels=1&rainsnow=1

The URL above is centered on my house, since all things seem to revolve around me anyway. The cool toggles are on the left of the main display, where it says "Advanced Radar Types" - click that and a menu will pop out. Use "animate map" at the top for a time history, and then at the bottom of the page (under "radar controls") be sure to click "Labels - Show All". If you then scroll down even further on the page, you will see all the data associated with the tracked cells.

OK, enough radar geekiness. Time to go play golf....

(If you don't happen to live where I live, click on the "US Radars" tab at the top to pick whatever is closest to you.)
 
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