How is a cloudburst formed?

Answer 1

A cloudburst can suddenly dump 72,300 tons of water over one square acre. This is quite a wallop and luckily it does not happen very often. A real cloudburst is very rare. Sometimes we call a sharp shower in the mountains a cloudburst when it really is not. The runoff from the slopes creates such a deluge that is seems that a cloud has burst open like a paper bag.

Of course, even in a real cloudburst, the cloud does not break open. It happens because the rain forming in the cloud has been unable to fall down in a steady shower. Sometimes this happens when the cloud is ready to rain and the ground below is scorching hot. Or maybe a very warm current of air is blowing under the rain cloud. Either of these events causes a strong updraft of warm air. Raindrops find it very hard to fall through a current of rising air. When they start down, up they are whisked again,

If this goes on for any length of time, the cloud gets an overload of rain. The drops that should have fallen are returned back up and new drops are being: formed all the time. Finally something happens to change the situation. The weight of rain is able to break through or maybe the updraft suddenly stops for some reason. Then all the raindrops, new ones and old, come tumbling down at once. Truly it seems as if the rain clouds burst.

Answer 2

A cloud burst is a period of very heavy rainfall. Usually it occurs under a strong thunderstorm cell and are more likely to occur with storms that are associated with tropical moisture. Cloud burst can result from several different right ingredients that comes together. Below is just one example of how a cloud burst can form.

Usually with a strong thunderstorm, the updraft will keep the water droplets up in the clouds. With non-tropical thunderstorms, these droplets will be push higher into the atmosphere where it will go above the freezing level and turn into ice. This ice stone is known as a hail stone. As the ice pellets circulate pu and down high above in the cloud, it will grow until the it gets too heavy for the updraft to keep in from falling or the storm and updraft weakens and the hailstone will be able to fall all the way to the ground. What you would usually end up with is a good hail storm.

With tropical large storms, there are usually more moisture for the storm to work with. But the other factor is the height of the freezing level. With the air being more tropical, the freezing levels are very high that the strong updraft of the storms are still not able to push the water droplet above the freezing level. So instead of hail growing in size, you have liquid water droplets growing in size, If the thunderstorm suddenly weakens or the weight of all that water combine with gravity finally overpowers the force of the updraft, the whole mass of water will start falling toward the surface. This is when huge tall thunderstorm will suddenly fall apart as the downdraft takes over as the dominate flow. When this large volume of water finally reach the surface, that will be your cloudburst and also the end of this strong thunderstorm cell.

Answer 3

Downbursts are caused by cooled air, usually by precipitation, that flows downward in a thunderstorm at high speeds until it hits the ground and spreads out in all directions.

Answer 4

Cloudburst in meteorological terms refers to a large amount of precipitation that sometimes accompanied with rain and thunder, it could lasts only than a few minutes.