Weather questions

A long, typically low, horizontal, detached, tube-shaped cloud mass, often appearing to roll slowly about a horizontal axis. The roll cloud, volutus, is a soliton, not attached to other clouds and is an example of an undular bore.

Lenticular clouds are stationary clouds that form in the troposphere, typically in perpendicular alignment to the wind direction. They are often comparable in appearance to a lens or saucer. Because of their unique appearance, they have been brought forward as an explanation for some unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings.

A weather front is a boundary separating two masses of air of different densities, and is the principal cause of meteorological phenomena outside the tropics. The air masses separated by a front usually differ in temperature and humidity.

Simoom is a strong, dry, desert wind. The name means "poison wind" and is given because the sudden onset of simoom may also cause heat stroke. Its temperature may exceed 54 °C (129 °F) and the humidity may fall below 10%.

A white squall is a sudden and violent windstorm at sea which is not accompanied by the black clouds generally characteristic of a squall. The name refers to the white-capped waves and broken water, its meager warning to any unlucky seaman caught in its path. A white squall was allegedly behind the sinking of the brigantine Albatross on May 2, 1961.

St. Elmo's fire is a form of plasma. The electric field around the object in question causes ionization of the air molecules, producing a faint glow easily visible in low-light conditions. Conditions that can generate St. Elmo's fire are present during thunderstorms, when high voltage differentials are present between clouds and the ground underneath. The nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere cause St. Elmo's fire to fluoresce with blue or violet light; this is similar to the mechanism that causes neon lights to glow

Catatumbo lightning is an atmospheric phenomenon in Venezuela. It occurs only over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo. The phenomenon is characterized by almost continuous lightning and occurs during 260 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour. It has been known for centuries as the Lighthouse of Maracaibo, since it is visible for miles around Lake Maracaibo

The Morning Glory cloud is a roll cloud, or arcus cloud, that can be up to 1,000 km long, 1 to 2 km high and often only 100 to 200 metres above the ground. The southern part of the Gulf of Carpentaria in Northern Australia is the only known location where it can be predicted and observed on a more or less regular basis due to the configuration of land and sea in the area.

Sound travels through air at 331.2 meters per second, so after 3 seconds it would travel approximately 1 kilometer.

Tornado Alley is a colloquial term for the area of the United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, and Minnesota.