what causes storms to happen?

Answer 1

The very basic and simple answer is uneven heating of the earths surface by the sun. Beyond that and it gets complicated. The atmosphere is a condition of heat, pressure, wind, and moisture. These conditions tend to remain separated and when the sun's heat tries to mix them, you get storms.

Here is a simple description of a thunderstorm and one way that they form. The dawn is clear but as the sun rises it starts to heat the ground. This starts a column of rising warm air. As it rises up into the atmosphere it expands and cools (warm air rises and cold air sinks). At some point it will have expanded and cooled past the dew point. The dew point is where the temperature is at a low point and the air cannot contain any more moisture as a gas and thus the moisture starts to change from a gas to a liquid. This is where the cloud starts to form. Every notice on a day when the sky is filled with puffy cumulus clouds the bases are all flat and at the same elevation in the atmosphere. Now you know why, that is the level in atmosphere where the dew point is. As the storm continues to grow in size and height it reaches an elevation where rain starts to develop and fall. The falling rain is colder than the air it is falling through and this cooling cause up drafts and down drafts. The thunderstorm reaches the freezing level in the atmosphere and rain freezes and the up and down draft turn this into hail. As night falls the ground heating stops and the overall temperature of the air starts to fall and the thunderstorm will start to disintegrate.

Answer 2

Storms form along air mass "fronts". These fronts are the edges of air masses in which the air is either rising or falling. The air masses differ in pressure and temperature. When a mass of warmer air is pushed up against a mass of cooler air, the warm air tires to travel over the top of it. The cooler air is also denser than the warmer air and this also prevents the warm air mixing freely with it. It is hard to imagine ordinary gas behaving like a solid, but in a very large mass it begins to act this way. As the warm, moist air travels up the wall of cooler air, it pulls the rest of itself along behind it. This is what creates the winds associated with storms. The temperature falls as it rises in the atmosphere, and at a certain point, the water vapor condences into droplets and falls as rain. The "dew point" is the temperature at which air will form water droplets. This point depends on the pressure and how much water is dissolved in the air (water dissolves in air like sugar dissolves in water). The falling water droplets carry electrons away from the atmosphere, giving it a positive charge. This charge is an electrical vacuum which builds up until it overcomes the resistance of the atmosphere. Elecricity then travels back up from the earth to replace the missing electrons. This is what lightening is.

If the two air masses meet along a stable front, the storms which develop are rather mild. Things change drastically if the front is rotated in some way. If it wraps back on itself, the warm air is accelerated through a narrow tube. This greatly increases its velocity along the walls of the tube. On land, tornados form when storm fronts get rotated by winds blowing across the great plains from the north east. In tropical oceans, hurricanes form when long bands of storm fronts are rotated by trade winds blowing across the open sea. At this point the storm becomes so powerful it begins to draw heat directrly from the ocean, and this intensifies the storm. However, the hurricane looses its power supply once it crosses dry land, but it still remains a very powerful storm for 24 to 36 hours. A storm is how the energy of warm air is redistributed when it encounters an area of less energy.

Answer 3

Usually I think its an inbalance of chemicals in the atmosphere. The elements dont mix right and you have a couple of small explosions that lead to more and more ans so on. Eventually, all the chemicals are burned out.

The basic ingredients used to make a Thunder Storm is a warm, moist air mass and the humid tropical air that flows over the eastern and central United States from the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Alantic Ocean around Bermuda during the Spring and Summer are the perfect recipe for Thunder Storms. Any kind of Thunder Storm can generate gust of wind that can trigger additional Thunder Storms up to 100 miles away.


Hope this helped and good luck!

Answer 4

cold and warm air masses pushing each other

i think