Meteorology Reference Libraries
The above cloud is known as a towering cumulus cloud or TCU for short. TCU clouds are a form of cumulus clouds. They are the second stage of the cumulus family. The thing that makes these clouds unique is the vertical extent of them. They can extend very high into the atmosphere and sometimes they form in multiple rows. Towering Cumulus clouds can bring waterspouts when they are over the open...
There are many types of air present in our atmosphere. The first type is known as dry air. Dry air is described as having less than 1% of moisture in it. The best location to find this type of air is in the Southwest part of the United States and also in the Middle East. The second type of air is called moist air. This air is best defined as having moisture present in it. Anything greater...
Tropical Storm Debbie on a surface chart. It is noted that just off the coast of Northern Florida a 999 surface pressure is found indicating to a meteorologist that an area of Lower pressure is arriving. In this case it’s Tropical Storm Debbie. The red lines indicate lines of equal pressure. Meteorologists label them in 4mb increments. So looking at the map it’s noted that there is a...
It is very important to understand what you are looking at when working with weather maps. In the image above we are looking at surface wind barbs. Surface wind barbs help us to identify which direction the wind is blowing and also the speed of the wind. If we look in the Northern Gulf of Mexico just to the south of Mississippi we see a wind barb in blue. This wind barb is from the East and...
The California current runs north to south along the West Coast of the United States. This current has huge impacts on the weather along the west coast. Along California this current is responsible for extensive Marine Fog layers every day during the summer, especially when the land is warmer than the waters along the coast. Also in the California area this current keeps the coastal cities...
If you look in the photo above you can see the line of Cumulus clouds that appear in the background. These clouds were created by daytime heating and also an unstable atmosphere. The moisture for these clouds was rising from the Pacific Ocean. The darker cloud is the stronger of the cumulus clouds meaning that the majority of the moisture is being absorbed by that cloud. The clouds around this...
Left Image Credit: Joshua Kelly - Right Image Credit: NASA Typhoon Guchol, these past few days, had made it to Super Typhoon strength which would be the same as saying that it was a CAT 3 or larger storm. It quickly raced up towards Okinawa Japan leaving its first imprints with reports of winds near 60-70mph with higher gusts. It then moved up northward into Shikoku Japan where it made...
Looking at the weather map above we can see that we have three and four digit numbers on the map. These numbers are known as Sea Level Pressure. They are recorded in MB. Looking at the Northern part of South Dakota we see a number at 995mb while over parts of Maine we see the number closer to 1020mb. So we would say that high pressure is over Maine, while low pressure is over the Dakota’s...
On June 17, 2012 a line of strong storms began to develop around 5pm CDT. These storms started forming multiple funnel clouds with one confirmed tornado that hit near a small town called PeeverSD. The size of the tornado has not been confirmed yet. There is one report of damage of a pickup truck and trailer thrown into the ditch off the I-29 interstate. Also multiple houses have loss portions...
June 7, 2012: Perth Australia was hit by a tornado. Tornadoes occur anywhere in the world when the conditions are right and this is a great example of hitting in a unique location. When we think of tornadoes Australia is not the first place that comes to most of our minds. However, it is not uncommon for tornadoes to hit in Australia, they just don’t hit as often as in the United States....
