Wildfire smoke, a storm complex, an outflow boundary, and gravity wave clouds were all seen in the skies across Missouri on Wednesday. Seeing a combination of 2 of these phenomena isn’t all that rare, but all four in the same area isn’t something you see every day!
A mesoscale convective complex (MCC) in Iowa dove southward into Northern Missouri on Wednesday morning. An MCC is a cluster of thunderstorms that begins along a boundary or near an area of low pressure, then later carries on independently from its source and can last for several hours. As Wednesday’s MCC ran into the heat dome, it slowly began to dissipate. But, before it dissipated, this complex produced an outflow boundary.
An outflow boundary acts like a miniature cold front that is produced by a thunderstorm. Rain-cooled air rushing out of the thunderstorm can only go downwards so far before hitting the ground. Therefore, the only direction it can go from the originating thunderstorm is outward.
This outflow boundary interacted with a stable airmass over Northern Kansas and Central Missouri. The intrusion of the outflow boundary into this stable environment created gravity waves, or undular bores.
Gravity waves form when stable air is lifted and then returned to its starting position. Gravity waves are only possible when stable air is disturbed because unstable air would continue to rise, potentially forming into a thunderstorm. Stable air has a natural tendency to return to its original position once the disturbance has passed. In Wednesday’s case, the disturbance was an outflow boundary.
In addition to all of that, the Ozarks are also dealing with bouts of smoke from wildfires in California, Arizona, and Colorado, as well as smoke from wildfires across Canada. So, if you thought there was a lot to look at in the Ozark sky yesterday, then you’d be correct.
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