How you can recreate weather fronts in your kitchen to show the physics behind thunderstorms



MILWAUKEE -- Fronts are determined by temperature, moisture content, and wind direction but to simplify it down, let's say the atmosphere is a clear plastic container full of water. Next, you'll need red and blue food coloring. Put a couple drops of blue food coloring into an ice tray and freeze it to create a blue ice cube. Once that's done, you're ready!

Place a few drops of red food coloring on one end of the container and mix until the water is red. Then place the blue ice cube on the other end and let the ice melt! As it melts, a wedge of blue water will take up the bottom of the container. This is exactly how a cold front works. It forces warmer more buoyant air out of the way.

Meteorologist patiently awaits his experiment showing cold water in blue interacting with room temperature water in red. In the middle, if this was the atmosphere thunderstorms would form.



Looking at this situation on a weather map we can see the stronger storms are along the cold front. This is the exact same process but on a much larger scale. As the colder front swings through, it pushes the warm air vertically and creates thunderstorms as that air rises.

Radar map of the southeastern United States experiencing a cold front producing severe weather