| A | B |
|---|
| A dangerous thunderstorm that can exceed heights of 20Km and persist for hours | Supercell |
| A narrow zone of abrupt moisture change where thunderstorms can develop | dryline |
| A scale used to determine the intensity of a tornado based on the destruction it produces | Fujita Intensity Scale (F-Scale) |
| A small band of thunderstorms that can be severe. These develop in the warm sector of a middle-latitude cyclone | Squall Lines |
| A storm that generates lightning and thunder | thunderstorm |
| A thunderstorm that results as mT temperature moves northward from the Gulf of Mexico | Air mass thunderstorm |
| A thunderstorm who has the possibility of creating heavy downpours, flash flooding, large hail, straight-line winds, lightning, and possibly tornadoes | Severe thunderstorms |
| A tornado with smaller intense whirls of suction vortices that orbit the center of the large tornado | Multiple vortex tornadoes |
| A type of radar that has the ability to detect motion within a cloud | Doppler Radar |
| A vertical cylinder of cyclonically rotating air that develops in the updraft of a severe storm and can lead to tornadoes | Mesocyclone |
| Also known as twisters or cyclones are violent windstorms formed by a rotating column of air that extends down from a cumulonimbus cloud | tornadoes |
| An alert to warn the public and local offices when an actual tornado has been sighted or indicated by weather radar | tornado warning |
| An alert to warn the public of a possible tornado over a specific area and time interval | tornado watches |
| An electric shock created by a thunderstorm | lightning |
| Explosive sound waves created when air is heated by lightning | thunder |
| First stage where the cloud continues to build to new heights | Cumulus gusts |
| First stroke of lightning following an ionized conductive ionized pathway | Leader |
| Many different thunderstorms organized into circular clusters | Mesoscale convective complex (MCC) |
| Point where clouds downdrafts dominate the column and the falling of precipitation begins to end the thunderstorm activity | Dissipating stage |
| Similar to a step leader - precedes each subsequent strike along the same path with less branches | Dart leader |
| Small downbursts associated with thunderstorms | Microbursts |
| The individual parts of a lightning flash | Stroke |
| The infiltration of surrounding air into a vertically-moving air column this process then intensifies the downdrafts | entrainment |
| The initial conductive path way that extends itself earthward in short nearly invisible bursts | Step leader |
| The most intense phase, with heavy rains and possible hail, in which downdrafts are side with updrafts | Mature stage |
| The real lightning strike where electric discharge results from the downward movement of electrons in successively higher levels | Return stroke |
| The tenths of a seconds of combined discharges that create a lightning strike | Flash |
| Where gust of warm air are pushed up because of spreading downdrafts | Gust Front |
