Satellite image animation of the constantly regenerating thunderstorm cells south of Valencia on Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Satellite image animation of the thunderstorm cells constantly regenerating south of Valencia on Tuesday, October 29, 2024. Meteosat “sandwich” representation, visible spectral range (black and white) overlaid with the temperature information at the cloud top from the infrar channel (shades of color, only the cold high cloud umbrellas are color). The high-reaching thunderstorm umbrella exhibits the “V-structure” so typical of strong autumn thunderstorm systems in the Miterranean for hours and is stationary throughout the entire event.
“Forcing” in the high atmosphere
In connection with thunderstorms, the English term “forcing” refers to all those factors that cause large-scale lifting processes in the atmosphere before and during the actual phase of the local to regional thunderstorm systems developing. These lifting processes lead to destabilization and humidification in the air masses in which the thunderstorms develop. Large-scale lifting processes (in the order of centimeters to a few meters per hour) should not be confus with the updraft areas in the individual, smaller thunderstorm cells. The latter are a consequence of this and are significantly stronger in magnitude (several meters to 100 meters per second).
In this case, the weather situation over the Iberian Peninsula iceland mobile database was characteriz by a clos low pressure system. This was cut off from a trough over the North Atlantic west of the British Isles on October 24th and then mov southwards towards Spain, where it has remain more or less stationary since October 27th.
The strong jet stream on the southeastern flank of this low-level system is striking. The “left exit” of the jet is the zone in which the large-scale uplift is most pronounc in the high and mium-high air layers flowing below. This zone was locat over the southern parts of the country in the first half of the day and mov along the Miterranean coast towards eastern Spain as the day progress.
low-tropospheric moisture supply
A low-pressure area west of the Strait of Gibraltar can 5 essential tips for creating an effective online presence be seen in the lower layers of the air. On its eastern flank, it controls a strong current from the southeast, which hits the coast almost at right angles from the Miterranean. With dew points of 17 to 20 degrees, this air mass was very humid and provid the energy, or in other words the “fuel” for the thunderstorms that constantly regenerat in the hinterland for hours. In the following illustrations, this strong supply of moisture is visualiz using the CAPE, the “Convective Available Potential Energy”, and the wind near be numbers the ground.
These lifting processes in the upper layers of the atmosphere and the strong supply of moisture near the ground last all day. The stationarity of these ingrients, which are necessary for strong thunderstorms on a large scale, is an essential aspect of this severe weather situation.