As the severe storms rolled across Michigan Tuesday, there was some ominous beauty in the sky. When storms are as strong as they were this morning, the atmosphere can have some spectacular cloud formations due to how turbulent the conditions are. This morning, strong straight-line winds left significant damage in its path in the form of toppled trees and widespread power outages.
With these types of storms, strong wind gusts occur just out in front of the storm. Accompanying these wind gusts are often shelf clouds. Shelf cloud in Wayland, MI Tuesday morning.
Pearl Kwiatkowski These are very long, low hanging clouds. Rising motion may be observed near the leading edge. According to the National Weather Service, an important identifier for shelf clouds is that they’re always connected to the parent cloud or thunderstorm that they’re preceding.
Large shelf clouds were seen Tuesday morning as severe thunderstorms moved through lower Michigan. Danielle Salisbury While ominous looking, these clouds very rarely produce tornadoes and are instead associated with straight-line winds. However, as seen this morning, straight-line winds can be just as dangerous, so always adhere to weather warnings.
Another cloud that is a bit less common but still present in some Michigan thunderstorms are roll clouds. As the name suggests, roll clouds are long, horizontal clouds that exhibit horizontal rolling motions. One important distinction that the National Weather Service uses between shelf an.
