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Severe Weather 2025

Grand Poo Bah said:
What does it mean when a storm is considered a "loaded gun"? Is it referring to a strong cap and/or lots of dry air aloft?
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It’s usually in reference to a skew t (aka a sounding) and is indicative of the environment, not necessarily a storm.

You have a layer of warm and dry air above the surface that is warmer than the air parcels underneath it. That acts as a “lid” because parcels can’t “break” through it to form thunderstorms. The energy will continue to build underneath it. Parcels only rise if they are warmer than the air around them.

It’s considered a loaded gun because once the cap erodes, thunderstorms can quickly form. So the environment is loaded so to speak, but the trigger isn’t ready to get pulled.

This is a good example. This is from the morning of 4/3/74, Montgomery, Alabama. Textbook example Of a loaded gun. You can see the sudden increase to the right in temperature of the red (temperature line) and the sudden increase to the left of the green (dew point line). Indicating the temperatures are both warmer and drier than what is below it.
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Was pretty clear by the time I got off work that the aggressive runs indicating greater potential for a quality early season, marginal-moisture northern Illinois tornado event were overblown, so I sat today out.

Did hear my first thunder of the year (wasn't any that I noticed around here last Friday) with the morning round with surface temperatures in the upper 30s, then we got some small and (fortunately fairly soft) hail with a midday round.

PXL_20250319_180210624.jpgPXL_20250319_180226082.jpg
 
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