Talk:Supercell

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former good article nomineeSupercell was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 11, 2005Peer reviewReviewed
October 2, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
Current status: Former good article nominee

Tornado reference[edit]

There is a tornado reference in here, that says tornadoes are most common in North America (though this article mentions the USA in particular); however, the UK has more tornadoes per mile than anywhere else in the world. Maybe the tornado reference should be changed if not gotten rid of. There is also a reference to super-cells being most common in the US great plains. An unverified and US-centric statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.129.2 (talk) 20:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well actually, the Netherlands has the most tornadoes per square mile. And this article is about super-cells, so the tornadoes referred to are violent, super-cell tornadoes, not the land-spouts and non-super-cell tornadoes the UK gets frequently. In terms of the number of violent tornadoes caused by super-cells per square mile, the United States certainly comes in first place, as the nation has more reports of EF4 and EF5 tornadoes than anywhere else in the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.3.151.28 (talk) 20:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Well since we're all being biased to our respective countries, I would like to add a little here. I agree, you should at least try and mention most of if not all the areas of the world where supercells and the tornadoes caused by them frequently happen. However, I disagree with the notion that one country or another has "more tornadoes per mile" than some other country. I don't think this statistic is really knowable at the present time. Here's why I think this way: I live in Pittsburg, Ks. Needless to say, I've seen some weather. :) On a bad "tornado day" in Kansas the setup is usually like this:: A CAP will set itself up over a region during the day, which suppresses the development of precipitation and allows the air at the surface to warm further than it would be able to if there were no Cap aloft. So, you will start out a typical tornado day in May in Kansas with sunny skies and high temperatures in the low 80's to low 90's.. Winds out of the southeast or southwest at around 30 to 40 mph. The humidity will be in the 80% to 100% range. On a day like this, you can feel the potential energy in the air on your skin. The air feels heavy. Then some time between 5 and 9 p.m.... The cap breaks.. Once it does, supercells begin to form within mere minutes.. You can literally SEE the cloud tops mushrooming up toward the top of the sky. These storms are extremely violent and volatile. Extremely heavy rain, wind speeds in excess of 60 MPH, and Hail to the size of baseballs are commonplace. This is when we get our strongest tornadoes as well. the F4 F5 varieties do unimaginable damage. I've seen a hospital around 6 stories tall made completely of concrete, shifted off of it's foundation. I've seen straw sticking out of telephone poles and trees. Cars are picked up and tossed for miles and never recovered. Sturdy, well built, wood frame houses that have stood for 100 years before are torn apart and swept clean from their foundations. I've seen road scouring, which is where a tornado sits and digs a hole through a road or highway and tosses pieces of it in all directions. The last tornado I saw was in Joplin, Mo. in May 2011. 158 people died. You simply cannot imagine what it's like unless you've seen it. I promise you. So, that's the scariest time to be in Kansas/Missouri during tornado season, of which we kind of get two per year. The most active period for my location is early April through late June, followed by another less active period in the fall.. Late August through Late October probably. Anyway, after these supercells have done some damage and had some fun for a while, they start to fight each other for the leftover available energy in the atmosphere. This causes them to congeal into line segments of thunderstorms. We call these "squall lines". Squall lines happen more late through the night and are usually a bit less powerful than their supercell cousins.. You still get a threat for straight line winds above 60 mph.. And sometimes you get these derechos that have winds over 90mph.. So, it's like getting hit by an F1 tornado! Sometimes these squalls like to book it across the state at 70 mph, giving you virtually no chance to get out of the way or prepare. Sometimes, these big squall lines will drop smaller, shorter lived, weaker tornadoes.. Sometimes, the rotation is not picked up very well on the radar, and the wind speed out of the originating storm is so high that it's difficult to distinguish on radar between the vortex signature and just the winds coming out of the big storm. Also, tornado touchdowns are verified by the National Weather Service after the fact and not during.. They come out up to several days after the storm is over and observe the damage. So, there are tornadoes out of these squall lines that touchdown out in the country somewhere and don't do any damage and therefore, are not recognized as tornadoes by the NWS. Tornadoes can also behave weirdly. So a small tornado can drop out of a squall line and do damage identical to what straight line wind damage would do and therefore, no verified tornado. There are lots of cases around here where you can talk to someone who saw a tornado on a particular day or night and then you look up the NWS reports for that day and don't find any information. So, because of all this... I don't think it would be fair at all to talk about supercells or tornadoes without talking about the places where by far, the most powerful and dangerous ones occur the most often. Don't believe me, you'll just have to spend a spring in this area and you'll find out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.248.220.52 (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feature Article (well... maybe someday)[edit]

If this current reworking stands ('major overhaul' in the history), then this will just be the beginning. I'd like to take this one on and fully illustrate it with PD NOAA imagery and add sections on evolution and identification. Also, I'm in a bit of a dilemma with the North American centered directional cues in talking about structure and movement. If they don't bother anybody I guess they can stay, as the majority of these storms do occur in this region (or at least the majority of interest).--demonburrito 17:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In meteorology (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), one learns from a North Hemisphere "bias" on how many weather systems (like Supercells) move through the atmosphere. One can usually just reverse a lot of the directional information in order to apply it to the Southern Hemisphere. Guy1890 (talk) 22:22, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

fin[edit]

okay guys... my work here is done.

here's a wish list:

stubs created for inflow fractus

cheers.--demonburrito 13:10, 10 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Images and explanation[edit]

  • The image for the high precipitation variation is not very good, and readers aren't really told what distinctive formations to look for. If there aren't any visual characteristics to look for, perhaps a radar shot would be more illustrative.
  • The formation process and relationships between vertical and horizontal movement are still a bit murky. Looking at the diagrams, it seems the formation of the mesocyclone and rotation about a horizontal axis does not entirely destroy a system of rough rotation about a horizontal axis (given the strong updrafts and downdrafts). How a horizontal axis can be made vertical like that is a bit unclear, mechanically. Does it involve the effects of impacts with the ground or inversion layers? Why is the shape so characteristic, and why does the mesocyclone tend to form in a particular quadrant? A diagram might help. Certainly a vertical cross-section showing wind patterns in general would be helpful.
  • The relationship between the supercell and weather fronts (when they are involved) is not well explained. One of the diagrams shows some front symbols; these also need to be explained.

-- Beland 03:31, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • The caption on the first diagram showing the structure of a supercell says the rotation is caused by Coriolis forces on the updraft. This isn't true. The rotation is caused by horizontal vorticity (i.e. speed shear) tilting with the updraft, and turning into vertical vorticity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.178.140.97 (talk) 18:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Failed GA[edit]

This article failed the GA noms under WP:WIAGA criteria 2b (lack of inline citations).Tarret 02:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It also fails on global coverage - almost the entire article is just about one country, ad nauseam, as if other parts of the world barely exist. {Globalize} tag added. - MPF 08:33, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge of Mesocyclone into this article[edit]

Seeing that a merge tagwas placed on mesocyclone today, with a discussion link to here, I would like to state my (initial, at least) opposition to such a merge. Mesocyclones are not specifically related to supercells, and I'm sure that even if they were, there is enough science and research behind them to warrant an article of its own. Crimsone 02:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Often a wikilink to mesocyclones is needed seperate from supercell. Plus, they are closely related but still seperate topics. -RunningOnBrains 04:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand why two completely seperate weather phenomena would be merged. A mesocyclone can be found within a supercell, and most often are, but they are not caused by a supercell and can be found outside of supercells. It would seem to me like trying to merge fish and fresh water. --Bluenadas 09:49, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mesocyclones when *almost* always referred to are understood to be within a supercell, but are distinct phenomena and both warrant articles (as do misocyclone and mesovortex and probably others). Evolauxia 18:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

tracking to the where?[edit]

"If they track to the right of the mean wind (relative to the vertical wind shear), they are said to be "right-movers." Alternatively, if they track to the left of the mean wind (relative to the shear), they are said to be "left-movers."" What does this mean? --Gbleem 10:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the motion of the rest of the line of storms. If the supercell's motion is to the right of the direction you'd expect it to move in based on that, it's a right-mover. If it's to the left, it's a left-mover. Rdfox 76 12:03, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
how does verticle wind shear fit into that? Wouldn't mean wind be the same regardless of vertical wind shear? --Gbleem 12:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not entirely sure--I'm somewhat of a self-taught amateur, so if anyone with professional training can set me straight on this, feel free--but I believe that it means that you don't look merely at the surface-level wind, or the 750mb wind, or the wind at any one level; you look at the average over the entire height of the storm to determine the overall mean wind.
However, what it all boils down to is that, looking at the storm on a radar loop, if it seems to be moving to the right of what the other storms are doing, it's a right-mover; if it's going left of them, it's a left-mover. I assume (and you know what they say about doing THAT) that the term came from either radar or visual observations of supercells doing those things, and then a technical definition was created using truly tortured English to describe it in a more "empirical" way. Rdfox 76 12:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To throw some actual numbers in (although this is just according to a professor of mine, I'm too lazy to find a source right now), supercells move at 75% of the speed and 30 degrees to the right (or left, I assume) of the 0-6 km mean flow. HTH. Jason Patton (talk) 22:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The most severe thunderstorm--Supercell or Squall line?[edit]

In the "Severe thunderstorm" part in Thunderstorm, it says "Severe thunderstorms can occur from any type of thunderstorm, however multicell and squall lines represent the most common forms." Though here in Supercell, it says "Supercell thunderstorms are the largest, most severe class of thunderstorms. ".

The two opinions don't seem to be inclusive.

Both of squall line and supercell are severe, I guess. Multicell is not necessary very severe, according to the articles...Any expert please? --Natasha2006 17:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The term supercell, although definitions differ in the details, refers to a persistent rotating updraft within a quasi-steady state cell of deep, moist convection (a thunderstorm). There are no requirements for the occurrence of severe weather, although the vast majority of supercells produce it so there is a strong association. Supercells do produce the largest hail as well as the largest, strongest, and longest path and duration tornadoes. Supercells come in many sizes, that has nothing to do with any definition, and squall lines and many multicells are usually much larger. Quasi-linear structures are the largest (excluding tropical cyclones) kind of convection, and can also produce extremely intense winds over a very large area (ranging from a microburst to a derecho in size and over 70 m/s (150 mph) in wind speed).
In a nutshell, neither squall lines or supercells are necessarily severe although supercells could be said to be the most severe storm, however, squall lines are the largest. Evolauxia 19:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Supercell aren't largest storms, why were visual and radar features removed?[edit]

Supercells can be very severe, but aren't the largest storms at all! Remember that supercells are still single cell storms and in terms of size they can't be compared to large mesoscale convective systems (consisting of dozens of cells)! It's rare that a supercell is larger than 60-80 km in length or 50 km in width (looking at a radar reflectivity). Some largest mesoscale convective systems' reflectivities are measured in hundreds of kilometers. And one more thing. Why were supercell visual and radar features taken away? They ware important parts of this article and therefore now the article is worse than it was some time ago--1123581321 (talk) 15:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Supercells are powerful storms. They can create lightning, rain, big hail and maybe tornadoes. Supercells come when cold air comes from Canada and hot from the Gulf of Mexico, the same way tornadoes work out. They also can create flash flooding, people may need help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.103.181.226 (talk) 00:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Severe weather Section[edit]

I added a section cleanup tag. It either needs to be rewritten or removed. The flow does not match the rest of the article. --D3matt (talk) 15:34, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Examples section cleanup[edit]

I added a reason to the cleanup tag already in place on the "Examples" section. Many of these "examples" of supercells do not appear to be related to supercells at all - they describe severe tornados and other severe weather events. If there are any references that establish a link between any of those events and a supercell, those references need to be cited; otherwise, the example is invalid for this article and should be removed. Some of the examples that do claim to be linked to supercells have no citation, or have a citation that makes no mention of supercells. All of these non-examples should be removed. This article is supposed to explain about supercells; it is not a catch-all history of severe weather events. StormWillLaugh (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I edited the North American example section of the article, which is where I am most familiar with severe weather. The thing to keep in mind is that supercells are pretty much a modern concept in meteorology, so you're not going to get that many explicit descriptions of severe weather that specifically mention supercells in older descriptions of severe weather outbreaks (like in 1936).
While, in my personal experience, many supercells spawn some kind of severe weather (like large hail, damaging winds or tornadoes) & especially violent severe weather, not all do. These sections need better sourcing for sure though. Guy1890 (talk) 05:25, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, great, thanks. If that's the case, I guess that just means that all specific examples will have to be recent ones. There's no point in including every severe weather event here. It may be common for supercells to cause severe weather, but can we say the converse? Is there any evidence that all or most severe tornadoes, hail storms, etc. originate from supercells?
Which leads us to the problem that probably caused this mess in the first place. There were complaints that an earlier version of this article was very biased to the U.S. (See above on this Talk page.) If the concept of a supercell is new and hasn't been studied or publicized much yet in many parts of the world, that would explain how that bias came about. There may not be any easy way of avoiding it for now. We should mention only sourced documented examples of supercells, which may very well be almost all in the U.S. so far. We could then add an explanation that supercells likely occur in some other parts of the world where the kinds of severe weather they spawn is common, and some well known historical severe weather might have been caused by supercells, but this has not yet been adequately studied. StormWillLaugh (talk) 14:56, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I do believe that supercells occur more often in the United States than anywhere else in the world, not just including documented cases. This should be mentioned. Dustin (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"It may be common for supercells to cause severe weather, but can we say the converse?" No, you can get severe weather from a variety of different kinds of thunderstorms, like pulse storms for example. "Is there any evidence that all or most severe tornadoes, hail storms, etc. originate from supercells?" Not that I'm aware of. One of the issues with not every single solitary supercell producing actual severe weather on the ground might be a lack of ground truth observations from underneath those supercells. I don't know of many NWS offices that wouldn't be issuing some kind of warning (severe thunderstorm warning or tornado warning) when they were observing supercells on their radar network. The chances that a supercell doesn't actually produce severe weather are very low. Guy1890 (talk) 19:12, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Images[edit]

None of the images currently in the article appear to adequately show the distinct features of a supercell. I looked on Flickr and there seem to be lots of freely licensed images that could be used here, but I'm not familiar enough with the subject to choose one. Could someone with more expertise please take a look? --101.108.112.135 (talk) 12:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hypercell[edit]

Some people call HP supercell called "Hypercell storm". Because HP supercell fall large hail and heavy rain, like the "hypercell storm". However, the hypercell storm updraft has been green hail core wrapped. 115.73.137.5 (talk) 03:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An "HP Supercell" is a "High Precipitation Supercell". I've personally never heard of a hypercell storm. Guy1890 (talk) 22:08, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 external links on Supercell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 15:27, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 external links on Supercell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:14, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

File:Supercell.svg to appear as POTD soon[edit]

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Supercell.svg will be appearing as picture of the day on April 11, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-04-11. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Supercell
A diagram of a supercell in the Northern Hemisphere, showing the different parts of its structure. Supercells are thunderstorms characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone: a deep, persistently rotating updraft. Of the four types of thunderstorms (supercell, squall line, multi-cell, and single-cell), supercells are the least common and have the potential to be the most severe. Supercells are often isolated from other thunderstorms and can dominate the local weather up to 30 kilometres (20 mi) away.Diagram: Kelvin Ma
Archive – More featured pictures...

North American supercell[edit]

In many places throughout this article/entry, the "North American" version is specifically stated and described in detail; yet NONE of the other 'regional' supercell versions are given the same type/amount of detailed coverage with accompanying graphics/pictures.

Why not?

If the North American version is that different or unique, shouldn't the other versions be EQUALLY discussed/covered/mentioned?

Just curious. 2600:8800:50B:6700:C23F:D5FF:FEC5:89B6 (talk) 00:47, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Supercell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:52, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Supercell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 16:37, 12 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Better picture of an LP supercell?[edit]

Hey all - just been doing a bit of cleanup on a few of the severe weather articles, and the "Idealized view of an LP supercell" picture (under "Supercell variations") is just... bugging me. I don't have the time right now to look on Commons for a better image to use there (will be going out of town soon), but I figured if we could get a few heads together, surely someone can come up with a better image for that? The picture that's there is just hideous, and I feel like we can do better. I'll probably see if I can find something better when I get back from my trip, but I thought I'd post something on the talk page here to see if maybe some other editors can keep their eyes peeled in the meantime. Sleddog116 (talk) 05:28, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Supercell&oldid=1194716639"