Weathered Questions 6.1
Sep 2, 2026 · 25 min · 10 segments
In this week's episode: tornado ratings, rain and snow at "off" temperatures, EF-5 ratings, are storms gettings stronger, and hurricane names. Submit your Weathered Questions to…
Sep 2, 2026 · 25 min · 10 segments
In this week's episode: tornado ratings, rain and snow at "off" temperatures, EF-5 ratings, are storms gettings stronger, and hurricane names. Submit your Weathered Questions to…
He asked, why do we get so many more storms in the afternoon and then they go away at night? So kind of getting at the timing of those storms, why it always seems to kind of be the same, at least here in the Midwest or the Great Plains for us.
Well, the big thing about these, Eric, is that the storms you're talking about are called air mass thunderstorms.
And what happens is if you were to look at a temperature trace or a temperature history of how our days typically go.
You're typically on a sunny summer day going to hit your high temperature between 4 and 5 p.m., most likely.
And if there's no atmospheric cap in place, which is a whole different show, we won't get into that.
then you're going to become unstable and something called convection is going to happen.
And an air mass thunderstorm is a vertical developing shower that eventually turns into a thunderstorm.
And they're actually, in my opinion, Jan, one of the biggest headaches to forecast.
He asked, why do we get so many more storms in the afternoon and then they go away at night? So kind of getting at the timing of those storms, why it always seems to kind of be the same, at least here in the Midwest or the Great Plains for us.
Well, the big thing about these, Eric, is that the storms you're talking about are called air mass thunderstorms.
And what happens is if you were to look at a temperature trace or a temperature history of how our days typically go.
You're typically on a sunny summer day going to hit your high temperature between 4 and 5 p.m., most likely.
And if there's no atmospheric cap in place, which is a whole different show, we won't get into that.
then you're going to become unstable and something called convection is going to happen.
And an air mass thunderstorm is a vertical developing shower that eventually turns into a thunderstorm.
And they're actually, in my opinion, Jan, one of the biggest headaches to forecast.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.