Why Are Storms Wet?

[jimmcginn]

The real reason water is involved with storms isn't simple. Convection is one of those notions that people want to believe because it seems simple. It's actually impossible. And there are no simple alternatives.

Understanding water's *correct* role in the atmosphere is the most important concept for understanding storms and atmospheric flow, including jet streams. Water's role in the atmosphere has to do with its surface tension, not convection.

People fight to maintain belief in an impossible explanation as long as it seems plausible. The real reason H2O is involved in storms and atmospheric flow seems implausible. Surface tension is not a simple concept.

The spinning of microdroplets along wind shear boundaries is what maximizes the surface area of H2O in the atmosphere. This only occurs when one body of air is moist and the other is dry and when they are moving in different directions. And it only occurs just along this boundary.

When you eliminate what is impossible your mind opens to consider what is implausible. When you maximize the surface area of H2O you maximize the surface tension. The ensuing plasma-like qualities that form are what comprise the the vortices that entail and inner slick surface that isolates and accelerates the moist air that flows up through them, causing storms.

All storms involve vortices that are themselves connected to the jet stream, itself a vortice and itself located along a moist/dry wind shear boundary, the tropopause. Normally these vortices are unseen. Sometimes, however, when conditions dictate (tornado alley), boundary layers extend all the way to the ground. When they do vortices can extend all the way to the ground, observable as a tornado.

People want to believe what is simple. When simple beliefs are shown to be false people experience cognitive dissonance. That makes them act like children who need their diapers changed.

Water's role in the atmosphere has to do with its surface tension, not convection. This explains why storms are wet. And it explains why people that believe in convection smell funny.