How lift ignites storms

In the past, we've talked about two of the four main ingredients needed to form storms including instability which is going to be the fuel needed for storms.

Another ingredient we've also talked about is wind shear, which is going to be the churning motion inside of storms. Wind shear is defined as the change in wind direction or wind speed as you get higher up in the atmosphere.

Today we're breaking down lift. Just like a hand lighter, we can have all the fuel we need in it to get a fire going, but without the actual spark, you can't light the fire. Lift is going to be the same concept for storms.

We can have all the energy and even some moisture and wind shear in the environment, but if you don't have something to spark these storms, such as a cold front you don't actually have a way to get these storms going. A front is actually going to be the main catalyst to drive these showers and storms.

A lot of times we have warmer, less dense air rising above colder air that starts to sink in. Typically winds out of the Northwest, bringing it back from the northern states or Canada. When this happens, that air rises, which has a lot of moisture, and eventually will start to cool and condense forming clouds and eventually storms.

Mid-Missouri is going to be seeing some chances of showers and storms as we gear up for the second half of this week into this weekend. The main driving force for those is going to be multiple chances of fronts sliding back into the region. If we have enough of the other ingredients, we'll see more chances of stronger storm chances like what we're looking at for Saturday night into Sunday.