Mike's Weather School: The stages of the thunderstorm life cycle

Have you ever been sitting out on the porch or at the beach in the summertime and noticed the clouds building nearby or over your head? An hour or two later, it's raining with lightning everywhere before the rain starts to become lighter and before you know it, the sun is back out again. My friends, you just witnessed the entire life cycle of a thunderstorm!

There are three stages to the thunderstorm life cycle and each one has distinct characteristics to help us tell which one we are dealing with at a specific time.

Stage 1: The Towering Cumulus (Developing) Stage

We start with the Towering Cumulus Stage or the Developing Stage (both are used in the meteorological community).

As the warm, humid air near the surface rises, it will cool and condense to form a cloud. As long as the warm, humid air remains available and cools down enough to condensate, the cloud will grow and become taller.

Cumulus clouds (the big cotton ball-looking ones) will continue to grow and "tower" over the area. The thunderstorm is what we call "updraft dominant" and will remain so until the cloud can no longer hold the rain that has formed.

In terms of the human life cycle, our thunderstorm is a child or teenager. They are growing and continuing to get stronger as time moves on

Once the cloud grows so much and there's too much cold air and rain for the updraft to support, it falls to the ground as a downdraft. This causes the sudden wind before a thunderstorm (known as a gust front) and is often visible as rain and/or hail (if any was produced). This brings us to the next stage of the thunderstorm life cycle.

Stage 2: The Mature Cumulus Stage

When you have an updraft and downdraft in a thunderstorm, we call this stage in the storm's life cycle the Mature Cumulus Stage (sometimes just called the Mature Stage).

At first, we do not get rid of the updraft completely. A lot of times, the thunderstorm moves with the surrounding winds. As the thunderstorm moves, it's still able to ingest the warm, humid air ahead of it while the downdraft remains just below or behind the storm.

The Mature Cumulus Stage is the strongest part of the thunderstorm's life cycle. If severe weather is expected in the area, this is what meteorologists are watching for. This is also where you often get the most intense lightning and heaviest downpours. We are looking to see if the storms will be in the Mature Cumulus Stage as they move through our forecast area. In certain circumstances, the storm's downdraft may be strong enough to fire off more thunderstorms nearby.

In our human life cycle analogy, the thunderstorm is a full-grown adult looking to start a family or already has a family.

Stage 3: The Dissipating Stage

The final stage of a thunderstorm's life cycle is called the dissipating stage.

At this point, the updraft is completely gone and we just have a downdraft. Since there is no more warm, humid air being ingested into the storm, the storm begins to weaken and eventually dissipates completely. In the human life cycle, this would be someone entering their final years.

Send us your weather questions!

If you have a weather-related question you would like to see answered, send Mike an email at msusko@sbgtv.com.