Storms at Night?

Question

How come it usually storms at night, but not as much during the day?

Answer 1

Sometimes during the middle of the night, the jetstream becomes more active, especially along cold fronts, causing more lifting in the atmosphere to take place. Often times this happens in our area too because of the jetstream forming large groups of thunderstorms called in fancy terms, an MCS, or Mesoscale Convective Systems. This just means that thunderstorms become most numerous during the overnight hours, and when the some comes back up the next day, they typically weaken because something about the jetstream winds weaken. It is difficult to understand and explain.

Answer 2

One possible factor could be that at night the tops of clouds (likely the coolest most expanded part) loses heat to outer space by radiation cooling while the tops of clouds would still be absorbing heat energy from the sun during the day.  Cooling the top of the clouds could produce falling snow that would provide nucleation points for more snow to form below which then melts to rain before it reaches the ground.

Answer 3

Probably a result of the heat accumulated during the day building the clouds into thunderstorm proportions.

Answer 4

beacause it usally heats up at night then mid night in some areas the temp goes down

Answer 5

Its because of daytime solar heating. Thunderstorms are fueled by heat and moisture. The surface of the Earth is emitting plenty of heat, which allows for plentiful thunderstorm development.

Answer 6

It may have to do with your location.  For example, many times storms will initiate in my area in the afternoons and move east and southeast through the night.  As a result, nighttime storms are rather rare here, but become more common further east.

Answer 7

Because the air is cooler at night and there is higher pressure in the atmosphere. The sun sometime evaporates the moisture that is in the clouds.