Lab 11: Weather Fronts

Learning Objectives: The purpose of this lab is to gain an understanding of how fronts look both vertically and horizontally in our atmosphere, and why they produce different types of weather. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of how weather conditions change with the passage of a weather front and will be provided with a review of decoding METARs and surface station models.

Weather Fronts

A front is a boundary between two air masses. Fronts are connected to mid-latitude cyclones. They can be: cold fronts, warm fronts, stationary fronts, or occluded fronts. All 4 are denoted differently and imply different things about the atmopshere.

Image description: Warm vs Cold fronts - Table of specific features listed as follows. Ahead of the front (before passage: Warm fronts have cooler temperatures and precipitation; Cold fronts have warmer temperatures and clear skies. Along the front: Warm fronts have clear and dry weather or light drizzles; cold fronts have precipitation and chances of thunderstorms. Behind the front (after passage): warm fronts have rising temperatures, pressure values will fall, and there will be clear skies; cold fronts have falling temperatures, rising pressure values and showers/clear skies.

Air masses

An air mass is a large body of air with similar temperature and humidity characteristics in any horizontal direction at any given altitude.

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