Why were Thursday evening’s storms in Southwest Florida so intense?
LEE COUNTY, Fla. —
An isolated but very intense severe thunderstorm impacted areas of Lee and Collier counties on the evening of Thursday, July 9.
A key factor that likely played a role in keeping this storm both isolated and intense is the Saharan Air Layer.
The Saharan Air Layer is a dry and stable layer of air that travels thousands of miles away from where it originates over the dusty Sahara Desert of Africa. Its ability to travel great distances relies on its use of strong winds in the mid-levels of Earth’s atmosphere. This helps it fly far from home, sometimes stretching from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other.
The Saharan Air Layer is made up of tiny pieces of dust and debris from the Sahara Desert. As it travels over the ocean, it absorbs the sun’s energy and warms up. This makes it a relatively stable layer of air in the atmosphere that often prevents or limits the vertical development of thunderstorms.
But since the Saharan Air Layer is just one or many layers of the atmosphere, it can sometimes allow intense updrafts of strong developing cells to punch through it. This exposes a developing thunderstorm updraft to an intense temperature gradient as warm air in the Saharan Air Layer meets up with colder air aloft. That temperature contrast can help a thunderstorm rapidly stretch upward, becoming very intense albeit very isolated.
Saharan Air Layer when the atmospheric cap breaks
A similar weather setup will be in place over the Gulf Coast of South Florida on Friday, July 10. So though we’ll focus on heat and humidity in the afternoon, be mindful of isolated but intense storms popping up by the evening.
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