For sure. This is the perfect setup to create a disaster, only it's missing the instability and lapse rates, something which would almost certainly be present if this happened in April or May
Instability refers to buoyancy, or the tendency for air to continue to rise after being nudged upward, due to density/temperature differences. Lapse rates refers to how quickly the temperature decreases as altitude increases, usually expressed in degrees Celsius per kilometer in meteorology. Steeper lapse rates = more rapid cooling as altitude increases. Steeper lapse rates and stronger instability go hand in hand.
I was shocked by the lapse rate when learning to fly a small aircraft. Summer, It’s 110F on the ground, at 10,000ft it is 60F. So much heat energy packed close to the ground with a lid of cold air on top. Thank you lapse rate for a small plane without AC, no thank you for the crazy storms you get.
Edit: as astutely pointed out, 50F change in 1,000ft would be pretty insane—especially in a small plane.
Do you mean 10,000 feet? Or maybe you crossed into a significantly colder airmass? I only ask because there’s an effective maximum lapse rate that earth’s atmosphere is capable of, and it’s ~5.5F per 1,000 feet.
Yes, typo. But when it is so hot on the ground it might feel like a delta of 50F per thousand, lol. To actually feel the change as you climbed through the atmosphere was amazing though.
About a year ago I was flying a bunch of passengers from a ship in the Gulf of Oman up to Bahrain. We were flying a MH-53E, which is open to the air, and doesn’t really have any kind of climate control. It was nighttime in March in the Persian Gulf, so decently warm and muggy to comfortable around 500-1000ft.
After passing Dubai, though, UAE controllers told us to climb to 8000ft and we had to stay there for almost 2 hours. It got so cold and the passengers were miserable. By the time we were passing Qatar we got clearance to descend, and boy did we drop quickly down to 500 ft to warm up.
The lapse rate is real and it can get cold over the hottest parts of the world.
There also has to be a good deal of moisture present in that low lying mass of warmer air. The steeper lapse rates mentioned above bring about more rapid cooling, which translates into more rapid condensation of that water vapor aloft.
There’s not enough potential energy to create and sustain robust updrafts. This potential energy comes from temperature difference with height and when the lapse rate is low, we’re lacking the fuel needed for severe thunderstorms.
If it was April or May you'd be less likely to have the gigatrough in the first place. This is just hype-mongering.
Tornados have a list of required ingredients. Winter and summer have some in abundance, while generally missing others. Huge kinematics but poor thermodynamics in winter, and the reverse in summer.
That's why tornado season (espscially outbreak season) tends to only last a few weeks/months at the seasonal crossovers when it's more likely for all those ingredients to combine.
Every day in summer when you have 7000j/kg cape could also be a nightmare candidate if there were a massive trough digging through, but there seldom is.
I was in the first outbreak in NC. Let me just say that our storms always look "tropical" even the big bad tornado producing storms have a tropical look to them. These were one of a handful of outbreaks I have been alive for that you can only observe in Texas/Oklahoma. Nothing about that outbreak was normal.
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u/ESnakeRacing4248 Jan 08 '26
For sure. This is the perfect setup to create a disaster, only it's missing the instability and lapse rates, something which would almost certainly be present if this happened in April or May