Thunderstorm - Motion

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 are less tall. Organized, long-lived thunderstorm cells and complexes move at a right angle to the direction of the vertical wind shear vector. If the gust front, or leading edge of the outflow boundary, races ahead of the thunderstorm, its motion will accelerate in tandem. This is more of a factor with thunderstorms with heavy precipitation (HP) than with thunderstorms with low precipitation (LP). 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.