Can thunder or thunderstrom forecast ? if it can then what are the procidure?

Question

Can thunder or thunderstrom forecast ? if it can then what are the procidure?

Answer 1

Weatherwiz gave some of the variables that are looked into for forecasting thunderstorms.  It's really not all that difficult much of the time.  Two situations where it is tricky are

(1) When there is a large "capping" layer which needs to be eroded away with daytime heating before thunderstorms can occur.  There is almost always some cap, but if it is large it's hard to tell whether there will be enough heating to overcome it.  You can forecast severe thunderstorms and end up with only a few small puffy clouds.

(2) Borderline cases where the instability is not that great.  The west coast of North America, for example, gets much of its thunderstorms from winter storms.  These are usually weak storms because there is not that much energy or moisture available to fuel them.  There may be only a handful of lightning strikes associated with them and determining whether or not you'll get lightning is a tricky business.

By the way, it's done every day in the U.S. by the Storm Prediction Center, you can see their thunderstorm forecast maps at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook...

Answer 2

Lots of variables are looked at when seeing if thunderstorms are possible.  You need to look at how much instability is being forecasted (both at the surface for surfaced-based thunderstorms and elevated instability for elevated thunderstorms), strength of lift (from either cold front, warm front, sea breezes, geography, outflow from other storms), you can look at forecast soundings to see what the forecasted numbers for Total Total index, Showalter Index, Lifted index, K Index.  You also need to see how much moisture is being forecasted, surface temperatures, temperatures aloft and how much wind energy is available aloft.  There is much more that needs to be looked at as well but to explain it here is very difficult