Updated:
January 23, 2008 16:26  

Thunderstorms occur frequently across Florida. In fact, the Florida peninsula has the greatest number of thunderstorms in the United States. One of the reasons Florida has so many thunderstorms is that many of the ingredients needed to create thunderstorms can be found here almost every day.

A thunderstorm is basically a huge engine that floats in the sky. Like a car engine, a thunderstorm needs fuel, a place to convert the fuel into power and an exhaust system. When everything is working correctly, a thunderstorm can have strong winds, hail, lightning, heavy rainfall and even tornadoes.

The perfect ingredients

So, let’s look at the ingredients needed to form a thunderstorm in more detail.

Fuel

Like the car engine, a thunderstorm needs fuel. That fuel is known as water vapor. Water vapor is invisible water floating in the air, and while we cannot see the water vapor, we can certainly feel it when the air gets very humid and sticky. Since Florida is surrounded by water, not to mention the many inland lakes, rivers, marshes and swamps, there are plenty of sources of water vapor to feed thunderstorms.

Lift

The next ingredient needed is a way to get the air to rise into the sky, or what meteorologists call lift. Sources of lift can be an approaching frontal system, a storm moving by in the upper atmosphere, or – as on most summer afternoons – the sun heating the ground. Each night, the ground over the inland portions of the state cools off because the sun is not heating it, but when the sun comes up the air near the ground becomes hotter and hotter.

Eventually, the air begins to rise, and as it does it cools. The rising, cooling air cannot hold as much water vapor as the warmer air near the surface, so water droplets begin to form and move around in the air. When water vapor becomes a water droplet, it releases energy to the storm, much like the pistons in a car’s engine provide energy to the car. Energy also is released at the top of the cloud, where water droplets form into ice crystals. We can see when this starts to happen because puffy clouds begin to form, and these clouds are called cumulus clouds.

Moisture

As the air over the inland areas rises, some air must come in to replace it, and it does so from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The winds move inland from the water, and that brings even more moisture into the growing thunderstorm. Soon there are so many water vapor droplets in the cloud that they collide and join together, growing larger and larger and becoming raindrops.

Downdraft

Until the raindrops form, there is only rising air, or updrafts, in the cloud, but when the raindrops become heavy enough, gravity begins to pull them down toward the ground. When this happens, the downward-moving air is called a downdraft. A cloud which has both updrafts and downdrafts will soon begin to produce rainfall, lightning and thunder. Once this occurs, it is called a thunderstorm, and the cloud is called a cumulonimbus cloud. If the updrafts and downdrafts in the storm are really strong, the storm may produce large hail, strong winds that can damage trees and houses, and tornadoes.

Exhaust

There is one thing we have left out so far. Remember, a thunderstorm is like an engine, and an engine has to have an exhaust system to take away the used-up fuel. At the very top of the storm, where the ice crystals are, strong winds blow across the thunderstorm, taking the ice crystals away. You can see when this happens as the top of the cloud becomes very flat, and there are wispy clouds, or cirrus clouds, moving away from the top of the storm, causing it to look like an anvil.

How long do thunderstorms last?

It’s not easy to say how long a thunderstorm will last. Thunderstorms come in different forms, which will determine how long they might survive. Sometimes a storm has only one thunderstorm cloud and will last for 20 to 30 minutes. Meteorologists call these types of storms single cell thunderstorms because each cloud is known as a cell.

Sometimes thunderstorms have a family of clouds, or cells, associated with them and the thunderstorm may go on for a very long time, but each thunderstorm cloud, or cell, only lasts 20 to 30 minutes.

So how does the thunderstorm go on for so long? Well, whenever a thunderstorm cell dies, inside the storm another develops, keeping the parent thunderstorm alive. These families of thunderstorms are called multicell thunderstorms. Finally, sometimes a thunderstorm cell can become huge and cover an area as large as some of our biggest counties, such as Marion County or Palm Beach County. When this happens, they are called supercell thunderstorms, and all supercell thunderstorms rotate. Supercell thunderstorms are very dangerous because they often can produce tornadoes. Meteorologists track these types of thunderstorms very closely!

Tracking Thunderstorms?

Meteorologists use many tools to forecast and keep close watch on thunderstorms. Weather balloons and weather instruments detect the moisture and unstable air needed for thunderstorms to form. Doppler radar is used to see inside thunderstorms. It can see heavy rains, hail and strong winds. Your local National Weather Service office has meteorologists and technicians working every hour of the day and every day of the year. They issue warnings when thunderstorms may become severe. Warnings give people time to move to places of safety.