sting-jet
n.— «As with many innovations in the understanding of extra-tropical cyclone behaviour, the origins of the “sting-jet” start with the insights of Norwegian weather forecasters. Norwegian meteorologist Sigbjorn Gronas has related how he was told by an experienced forecaster in the 1960s that the most fearsome storms were those that had developed a “bent-back occlusion” in which the warm front, and its associated cloud-head, curl three quarters of an anticlockwise revolution to lie immediately to the south of the cyclone centre—like the first twist of cream on a stirred cup of coffee. Mr Gronas termed this signature the “scorpion’s tail.”…it turned out the low-level “sting-jet” was separate and related to intense, small-scale pulses of slantwise convection at the layered interface between the warm moist ascending air—the end of which forms the scorpion’s tail—protruding into the “dry intrusion” of air from around the jet stream level that gives the characteristic dry slot at the centre of an intense extra-tropical storm.» —“Risk—Weather models—A brighter forecast” by Robert Muir-Wood Reinsurance (U.K.) Sept. 1, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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