Structure of thunderstorm gust fronts with topographic effects

Abstract

Surface meteorological observations, associated with gust fronts produced by thunderstorm outflows over Tehran, an area surrounded by mountains, have been analyzed. Distinctive features are sudden drop in air temperature, up to 10°C, sharp increase in wind speed, up to 30 m s−1, with wind shift, to northwesterly, pressure jump, up to 4 hPa, humidity increase, up to 40%, and rain after some 20 min. Gust fronts which often occur in spring time, have a typical thickness of about 1.5 km and produce vertical wind shear of the order of 10−2s−1. Although these features seem to be common for most of the events, their intensities differ from one event to another, indicating that the gust fronts may occur in different sizes and shapes. Apart from a dominant effect on the formation of the original thunderstorms, topography appears to break up the frontal structure of the gust fronts. The internal Rossby radius of deformation for these flows is small enough (∼ 100 km) for rotational effects to be minor.