Neighborhood Thunderstorm

The storm is in full effect as you sit by the window watching sheets of water stream down on to the town. Every once in a while, thunder roars through the night sky, and it is echoed by the neighborhood’s dog’s bark. Then silence blankets the streets, except for the sound of the rain hitting the ground, and then again the thunder in the distance. A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm, a lightning storm, thundershower or simply a storm, is a form of turbulent weathercharacterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere known as thunder.[1] The meteorologically assigned cloudtype associated with the thunderstorm is the cumulonimbus. Thunderstorms are usually accompanied by strong winds, heavy rain and sometimessnow, sleet, hail, or no precipitation at all. Those that cause hail to fall are called hailstorms. Thunderstorms may line up in a series or rainband, known as a squall line. Strong or severe thunderstorms may rotate, known as supercells. While most thunderstorms move with the mean wind flow through the layer of the troposphere that they occupy, vertical wind shear causes a deviation in their course at a right angle to the wind shear direction.