Motion
The two major ways thunderstorms move are via advection of the wind and propagation along outflow boundaries towards sources of greater heat and moisture. Many thunderstorms move with the mean wind speed through the Earth's troposphere, or the lowest 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) of the Earth's atmosphere. Younger thunderstorms are steered by winds closer to the Earth's surface than more mature thunderstorms as they tend not to be as tall. If the gust front, or leading edge of the outflow boundary, moves ahead of the thunderstorm, the thunderstorm's motion will move in tandem with the gust front. This is more of a factor with thunderstorms with heavy precipitation (HP), such as air-mass thunderstorms. When thunderstorms merge, which is most likely when numerous thunderstorms exist in proximity to each other, the motion of the stronger thunderstorm normally dictates future motion of the merged cell. The stronger the mean wind, the less likely other processes will be involved in storm motion. On weather radar, storms are tracked by using a prominent feature and tracking it from scan to scan.
Read more about this topic: Air-mass Thunderstorm
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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