Quiz #4 Study Guide Pt. 2

Thunderstorms (25 pts). Ordinary single cell (air mass) and severe thunderstorms. How might you distinguish between an air mass and a severe thunderstorm?  Life cycle of an air mass thunderstorm (3 easy to remember stages). How can the dissipation of one storm lead to the formation of another? Thunderstorm features and, in some cases, processes that produce them: gust front, anvil cloud, shelf cloud, mammatus clouds, microburst. Wind shear. Why can a storm with a tilted updraft become stronger and last longer than a storm with a vertical updraft? Supercell thunderstorms.  Mesocyclone, wall clouds, and hook echoes (on radar).

Tornadoes (30 pts). Average characteristics: low pressure core, duration, length of path on the ground, diameter, speed of rotating winds, speed and usual direction of the movement on the ground. Tornado season (when do the most tornadoes occur, when do the strongest tornadoes occur).  Life cycle.  What causes the tornado cloud?  Fujita (and the newer EF) scale. Tornado winds and damage. Multiple vortices, suction vortices.  Tornado watches and warnings. 

Lightning (30 pts). What creates the electricity in thunderstorms? Normal distribution of electrical charge in a thunderstorm. Types of lightning discharges, intracloud, negative and positive cloud-to-ground lightning, and upward lightning. Sequence of events in a multi-stroke cloud-to-ground lightning flash: stepped leader, upward connecting discharge, first return stroke, dart leader(s) and subsequent return stroke(s). Unusual types of lightning and rocket-triggered lightning. Lightning hazards and safety. What produces thunder? Determining the distance to a lightning strike.  How/why do lightning rods and cars offer protection from lightning?

Sample Questions from the Fall 2000 packet.
Quiz #6: 1-5, 7-11, 13-16, EC1?, EC2?       Final Exam: 4, 28, 33, 39, 51

Hurricanes (25 pts).  Formation (where and when). Eye, eye wall, spiral rain bands, low pressure & converging winds at surface, high pressure & diverging winds aloft. Stages of storm development. Storm surge and hurricane damage, Saffir-Simpson scale.

Sample Questions see this list of questions.

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