Pulse thunderstorms and their formation

As Mid-Missouri sits into later portions of July, isolated pulse thunderstorms remain a possibility most days this week.

Just southeast of Mid-Missouri, pulse thunderstorms can be observed towards Cape Girardeau. These single celled storms have brought lighting, brief wind gusts, and moderate downpours across isolated areas, but remain short lived falling well short of becoming strong enough to become severe warned cells.

While typical multi-cellular storms or supercell storms typically rely on the four listed ingredients above to thrive, pulse thunderstorms survive more importantly off of instability and moisture during the summer months.

Instability in the atmosphere is measured in CAPE. This stands for Convective, Available, Potential, Energy. It is a measure of the energy the environment has for storms to thrive off of. The higher the CAPE, the higher chance of stronger storms when paired with multiple other ingredients.

Pulse thunderstorms occur as the surface of the earth is warmed throughout the day leading to more energy known as instability in the environment. This causes a rising updraft which meets with moisture t cool and condense to form cumulonimbus clouds.

These storms will typically remain below severe warned parameters more often than not as they typically remain up and going for 30-60 minutes. Eventually, the storms will collapse on themselves as the downdraft forms and sucks the energy out of the storm effectively ending its lifespan.