Previously in posts on the weather, I’ve talked about air masses, warm and cold fronts , and most recently cold-occluded fronts. Today I’ll be posting about warm-occluded fronts.

As with the cold-occluded front, in a warm-occluded front a cold front catches up to a warm front. The difference lies in the relative difference in temperature between the two cold air masses. In a warm-occluded front, the coldest airmass in below the warm front; it’s ahead of the cool airmass. This can be seen in the figure below - the very cold air mass is a very dark blue, and the cold air mass is a lighter blue. Obviously, the very light blue represents rain and the white represents clouds.

We can see on the left hand side of the image, a cold front moving from left to right, with its associated cumuliform clouds. On the right hand side of the image, we see a warm front also moving from left to right, but at a lower velocity, with its stratiform clouds. As time passes, we see the cold front catch up to the warm front. At the surface, we see the warm front stays at the surface and the cold front moves above the surface because the coldest, most dense, air is below the warm front. This is in contrast to the cold-occluded front where the cold front is at the surface and the warm front has been pushed up into the atmosphere.

Temperature are going to be very cold before passage of a warm-occluded front, with the temperature rising after passage, but still being cold. The pressure will fall until the front passes, and then rise. Expect light-heavy showers before, during, and after the passage of a warm-occluded front. The visibility is especially poor in a warm-occluded front, but it begins to clear after the front moves out.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Related Posts:

Trackback URI |