CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – While it was a dry evening on Saturday for many, some in Hampden County saw strong thunderstorms that caused isolated tree and power line damage.
The 22News Storm Team has the details on how thunderstorms can form so quickly.
There are three main ingredients you need for thunderstorm formation. Moisture, unstable air, and some sort of lift in the atmosphere. It all seems complicated, but on a warm summer day, you already have two of those, warm and moist air.
If it were to stay near the ground, that would be an unstable atmosphere, so there is the third ingredient. This all start to create an updraft, which is an upward current of warm and moist air. This will create the cloud we see in the sky and once there is enough water vapor, then the clouds start to produce rain and sometimes you can even see lightning and see thunder.
Once the updrafts, or upward current of motion stop, that’s when a storm starts to become weak. This will then give us less rain and eventually the clouds will clear leaving us with a sunny summer day again.