Wall Cloud - June 6th

[martinastro]

Here's a few snaps of the wall cloud I oberved this afternoon under a line of cells far away to my SE. Duration 15-20 min's with dynamic motion, at one stage almost touching the ground.

[markt]

Nice set of images Martin.  Wall clouds are actually quite common when you know what you're looking for

[martinastro]

Thanks Mark, they are fairly common under storms and cells but not very common at the same time. I've only seen 2, perhaps 3 wall clouds from the 14 thunderstorms I have seen this year. A rotating wall cloud is much more rare...been a while since I've seen one of those. 

[jgs001]

Nice shots Martin... what makes a wall cloud ?

[Tyler]

I'm not sure I'd call it a wall cloud, I would say lowerings are common, but a wall cloud to me is a blocky lowering about half way to the ground from the cloud base. I almost want to call a wall cloud a rotating lowering in the updraft now that I've seen a few better ones this season...Lol nevermind me, there is no official definition, its just people in the US call anything a wall cloud nowadays. Yours is a definate lowering in the base, thus most (chasers) would call it a wall cloud. Good eye to catch that tho.

It's just weird to see the difference of storms in the uk and us, cause your storms can spin up randomly and produce with real low tops. Now I'm done babbling.

[martinastro]

Thanks for your input Tyler. Yes it's amazing the difference with the UK low topped storms compared with the US monsters, the biggest storms I seen here in early June had tops just over 40,000 ft high which is pretty awesome by UK standards, the one which hit Maghera on Sat had an overshooter which tapped into the stratosphere for a time so would have been a severe cell. These are probably tame in comparison to what you get Tyler lol, I could imagine with your temps and instability that your storms must be huge with high troposphere heights. The storms here can indeed spin up very rapidly and on occasion last for hours, but they don't have the life of your mega supercells....oh, how I would love to see one of those!!!  . Thanks for the comments Tyler.

John, cheers, wall clouds are an abrupt lowering which form under the base (rain free base) of the storm at the inflow region. They can be rotating or non rotating and mark the location where a funnel or tornado might drop. They are caused by water droplets near the precip area condensing into cloud/scud which then organize into a lowering. They often exhibt rapid motions upward into the cell. Hope this helps.