Cold pools in thunderstorms can only travel so far before the Coriolis force deflects the winds and the outflow dissipates. The Rossby number is one way to characterize the impact of Earth's rotation on a flow feature, but to understand how far boundaries such as cold pools travel it is often more convenient to use the Rossby radius of influence,

where H is the depth of the perturbation, and ? _v is the virtual potential temperature (in K). Suppose a thunderstorm occurred over OKC and created a cold pool 1.5 km deep, with a virtual potential temperature difference across the gust front of 20 K and a mean virtual potential temperature along the gust front of 300 K. How far in the E-W direction would the cold pool travel? Does this make sense? What factors are we not accounting for that may lead to a different result than that expected here?

Transcribed Image Text:

AR S = (9H40%) θυ f AR S = (9H40%) θυ f

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Here H 15 km 1500 m v 300 K v 20 K We know g 98 ms 2 f 2sin 2 727 105 sin 35 834 10 5 So R 98 1... View the full answer