thunderstorms geography 7 multiple choice question and 2 explain
1. Which of the conditions listed below would most encourage the formation of thunderstorms?
A) Very cold, very dry air at the surface, very warm humid air above it.
B) A cP air mass meeting a cT air mass
C) Warm humid air at the surface, very cold very dry air above it.
D) Descending air aloft.
2. What is the main difference between the environment that produces a garden-variety air mass thunderstorm and the environment that produces a supercell thunderstorm?
A) Air mass thunderstorms require their updrafts and downdrafts to be in separate parts of the cloud.
B) Both require a deeply unstable atmosphere, but supercells require a lot of wind shear at many levels as well.
C) Air mass thunderstorms require a much faster forward speed than supercells do, so the environment must move the air mass storm quickly.
D) Both require a deeply unstable atmosphere, but air mass thunderstorms require a lot of wind shear at many levels.
3. The Midwest is really “tornado alley”, but why does the Southeast (Fl, Ga, Al, Ms) get more thunderstorms?
A) mP air from the Atlantic coming ashore.
B) Onshore flow of warm humid mT air being heated from below.
C) Way more cold fronts in the Southeast than in the midwest, surprisingly.
D) It’s those drylines, the SE is noted for an overabundance of the sorts of drylines that generate thunderstorms.
4. Texas often gets more tornadoes in a year than does Illinois or Arkansas, or most other states. Does this mean that Texas is the “tornado state”?
A) No, because Texas is just so much bigger than other states, that you have to correct the data to count “so many tornadoes per 10,000 square miles” in order to see which state really does get more tornadoes per unit area.
B) No, because Texans are always making outrageous claims, so this can’t be true.
C) Sure does, numbers don’t lie.
D) Texas actually doesn’t get many tornadoes at all because of those cT air masses.
5. The pressure of the wind increases with the square of the wind speed. Thus a wind of 300 km/hr is how much stronger than a wind of 100 km/hr?
A) 200 times stronger
B) Not enough information to tell how much stronger.
C) three times stronger.
D) Nine times stronger.
E) 900 times stronger
6. “Heat lightning” is lightning that is:
A) produced when temperatures are over 90 degrees Fahrenheit but very low humidity.
B) lightning caused by the heat of friction as one thunderstorm brushes past another one.
C) A high-altitude atmospheric phenomenon which occurs in the Mesosphere as particles of the solar wind interact with the Earth’s magnetic field.
E) just normal lightning, but in a thunderstorm far enough away that it’s over the horizon and you can’t see the storm or hear the thunder.
7. About a hundred years ago, some Harvard type thought deeply about tornadoes, and decided that houses explode in tornadoes because the funnel is an area of sudden intense low pressure: when it surrounds your house, the higher pressure inside your house lifts the roof and the house falls apart, so he suggested “opening windows in the house would allow the pressure to change quickly, thereby reducing the damage.” Dozens of people have been killed following that idiot’s suggestion: why was he wrong?
A) He wasn’t wrong, he was a Harvard man!
B) He was wrong because his logic was backwards: you close the windows to keep the debris cloud out, silly.
C) The 200 + mph winds and the debris cloud around the tornado funnel will get to your house before the funnel does, and those winds and the debris cloud will sweep your house away like a buzz saw, including those windows, open or closed.
D) He wasn’t wrong, my grandma always opened the windows if there were tornadoes possible, and she lived to be 98.
E) He was wrong because you’re supposed to open the windows whenever there’s a low pressure system coming through, not just tornadoes.
8. Briefly explain how a pre-frontal squall-line can form a couple of hundred km ahead of the cold front, rather than specifically at the front itself.
9. You’re flying with your instructor, and there’s a thunderstorm ahead, not far from the runway you’re about to land on. Suddenly your airspeed indicator jumps from 100 knots to 150 knots, and the plane lifts higher and now you’re well above the glide path for landing. What is it that you just might have flown into, and why would now be a bad time to cut back on the throttle and try to land?
