Does the southwestern monsoon cause West Coast Wildfires? Monsoons are best known for bringing monsoonal rains but the term specifically refers to a change in a wind pattern, which may enable the presence of inclement weather. A wet monsoon may be a blessing if fighting flames. When winds sourced from the oceans moisten the hot,
Read MoreTypical Formation of Cloud-to-Ground Lightning. Lightning manifests due to the breakdown of the insulating property of dry air. When the localized electrical potential gradient exceeds about three million volts within fifty meters, the phenomenon shoots electrons into a cloud and toward the ground as a stepped leader. Composed of discharges spanning about fifty to a
Read MoreHook echoes are meteorological phenomena named after their shapes. They’re created when vertical wind shear causes warm, moist air, sucked in by the unstable movements of a supercell thunderstorm, to mix with a different incoming channel of drier, cooler air. The shape they assume resembles a hook because the two streams of air aren’t mixing
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