Radar observations of precipitation production in thunderstorms

Abstract

Precipitation production is investigated for 9 intense thunderstorms that developed over the Lowveld in South Africa. A C‐band radar is used to observe the 3‐dimensional reflectivity pattern. Using an empirical relation between reflectivity factor and precipitation content and integrating over the storm volume provides an estimate of the total precipitation content aloft. Likewise, an area integration of the instantaneous rain rate at cloud base yields an estimate of the rate of total outflow. At their maturing stage, the storms had precipitation contents of 0.2 to 5.0 Tg and rainfall rates of about 0.3 to 2.0 Gg s^?1. The total accumulation of rain at the ground ranged from 1 to 10 Tg. The characteristic storm updraft, defined as the ratio of the area‐averaged rainfall rate to the volume‐averaged precipitation content, was about 5 ms^?1 for all storms. The time evolution of integral storm parameters is also presented and related to the overall storm development. The precipitation production values observed in the Lowveld storms compares well with previous estimates reported for large thunderstorms observed in Alberta and New England.