When you sit down at home in front of the television with your family, you watch the news and then the weather and your children start to ask you all sorts of questions about all the different terminology used by the weather person to describe what should happen tomorrow or the next few days with the weather in your area or in other parts of the country of the world. Do you know all the answers? Have you ever taken the time to find out what all this news weather terminology is all about? Here are some quick points about some of the more common weather terms used. What are Fronts? A weather front is where two air streams meet each other. The air streams will have differing humidity and temperature. Warmer air is less dense and therefore rises up over cooler air. Warmer air expands and gets cooled as it rises. Cooler air holds less water vapor. The water condenses from the atmosphere which forms clouds and can lead eventually to rain. What are the different kinds of Fronts? Warm Front †This is where there is change from the cold air to warmer air. Warm fronts are defined as the area where warm air masses are replacing cold air masses. Most often warm fronts will move from the southeast to the northeast and the air that is behind a warm front is generally warmer and more moist than the air ahead of it. If a warm front passes you will find that the air becomes warmer and has more humidity. In a weather map a warm front is usually shown with solid lines and semi circles at the front of the lines themselves. Cold Front †This is where there is a change from warmer air to cold air. Cold fronts are defined as the area where cold air masses are replacing warmer air masses. Most often cold fronts will move from northwest to southeast and the air that is behind a cold front is generally colder and drier than the air ahead of it. If a cold front passes you will find that the temperature drops and the air is drier. If a cold front passes the temperature can drop up to 15 degrees in a 60 minute period. If there are significant amounts of moisture then cold fronts can often lead to thunderstorms or rain showers. In a weather map cold fronts are usually shown as solid lines with pointed triangles. Cold fronts will produce more volatile types of weather than warm fronts. When a cold front meets warmer air the air is forced upwards and that swift force of the air causes instability within the two fronts. Then cumulus clouds are created because they are putting out water vapor that then triggers storms to the boundary of the air mass. The fast rising air forces an area of low pressure behind it that causes strong winds. In some cases a cold front will overtake a warm front that is moving slowly. If that does happen warm air gets caught up in the cold front and the two fronts will move together. This boundary between the two fronts is called an occluded front. Occluded Front †This is when a cold front gets ahead of a warm front. Stationary Front †This is a front that is not moving. If a warm or cold front stops moving then it has then become a stationary front. Dry Line †This is a moisture boundary. A dry line is the boundary that will separate dry air masses from moist air masses. So now you have some of the basic terminology and when your children question you about what all the lines and squiggles are when the weather person is giving the weather news for the next few days, you will be able to tell them what you know. The weather and the patterns are a science that many try to define however as you know, you can not always trust the weather to do exactly what the weather person told you it would do on the evening news.
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