What is the difference between severe thunderstorm warning and watch

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The water vapor it contains begins to cool, releases the heat, condenses and forms a cloud. The cloud eventually grows upward into areas where the temperature is below freezing. As a storm rises into freezing air, different types of ice particles can be created from freezing liquid drops.

The ice particles can grow by condensing vapor like frost and by collecting smaller liquid drops that haven't frozen yet a state called "supercooled". When two ice particles collide, they usually bounce off each other, but one particle can rip off a little bit of ice from the other one and grab some electric charge. Lots of these collisions build up big regions of electric charges to cause a bolt of lightning, which creates the sound waves we hear as thunder. The Thunderstorm Life Cycle Thunderstorms have three stages in their life cycle: The developing stage, the mature stage, and the dissipating stage.

The developing stage of a thunderstorm is marked by a cumulus cloud that is being pushed upward by a rising column of air updraft. The cumulus cloud soon looks like a tower called towering cumulus as the updraft continues to develop. There is little to no rain during this stage but occasional lightning. The thunderstorm enters the mature stage when the updraft continues to feed the storm, but precipitation begins to fall out of the storm, creating a downdraft a column of air pushing downward.

When the downdraft and rain-cooled air spreads out along the ground it forms a gust front, or a line of gusty winds. The mature stage is the most likely time for hail, heavy rain, frequent lightning, strong winds, and tornadoes. Eventually, a large amount of precipitation is produced and the updraft is overcome by the downdraft beginning the dissipating stage.

At the ground, the gust front moves out a long distance from the storm and cuts off the warm moist air that was feeding the thunderstorm.