What in the world are these clouds? Everything you need to know about shelf clouds!

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — A powerful line of storms moved through yesterday morning bringing with it damaging winds, heavy rain, and even the threat of hail. All across the state from western Michigan even into mid Michigan we saw wind gusts between 40 to 60 mph and a few 70 mph winds as this system moved through the area.

The storm system that moved through is commonly known as a mesoscale convective system or MCS, which according to the National Weather Service is a collection of thunderstorms that act as a system. They can spread across an entire state and last more than 12 hours. Sometimes MCS can appear as a solid line, broken line, or clusters of cells.

Ahead of yesterday’s storms, we had an impressive and beautiful cloud that took over the horizon and at times looked like a UFO was ready to land right on top of us. Viewers from across mid-Michigan and even our SkyView Network cameras took amazing shots of this cloud formation called a shelf cloud that moved in.

According to the NWS, a shelf cloud is often associated with a squall line (or line of strong thunderstorms) and can bring severe damaging winds, and heavy rain. These clouds are easy to identify by their horizontal shape and are large enough to cover the entire horizon.

These clouds form just like normal clouds with warm air rising, cooling condensing, however, there is a little bit more to it than that. Let’s go back to a few weeks ago when we were discussing how hail forms , we discussed the basic ingredients for how thunderstorms form. Remember all thunderstorms have an updraft that feeds the storm that warm moist air and it also has a downdraft that removes the cold air from the storm. Take those two ingredients and you’ve got the basics for a shelf cloud.

When the storm is moving quickly, the cold downdraft pushes rain-cooled air ahead of the cloud, the incoming warm air has to push up and over that pocket of cooler air and that is how you get those distinct layers to form. When a shelf cloud passes over an area it first brings the strong and damaging gust of wind then the rain because of that cooler downdraft ahead of the system.

A lot of individuals think that shelf clouds are an indication of a tornado or are mistaken for being a tornado, shelf clouds can produce brief spin-ups but do not produce tornadoes, they are just an indication of strong and damaging winds moving into an area.

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