sting jet

n. a weather formation characterized by high, damaging winds, caused by rapidly descending cool, dry air in contact with warm, moist air. Subjects: English, Jargon

Editorial Note: A picture of a sting jet can be seen here. Etymological Note: As indicated in the citations, Keith Browning, Peter Clark, and Tim Hewson coined the word, based upon the scorpion-tail-like shape of the weather formation when viewed from above.

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Citations: 2003 Roger Highfield Daily Telegraph (U.K.) (June 18) “A sting in the tale of the Great Storm” p. 14: Dubbed the Sting Jet, it is the source of the most damaging winds that scour Britain in winter, uprooting trees, damaging property and taking lives. The name was inspired by an expression first used by Norwegian meteorologists four decades ago.…They talked of the “poisonous tail of the bent-back weather front.“ Prof Keith Browning at the University of Reading and Peter Clark and Tim Hewson of the Met Office have found the sting in the tip of this tail and coined the evocative phrase Sting Jet to describe the extraordinary gales that it spawns. 2003 Robert Muir-Wood Reinsurance (U.K.) (Sept. 1) “Risk—Weather models—A brighter forecast” p. 53: 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. 2005 Roger Highfield Telegraph (U.K.) (Jan. 13) “‘Sting jet’ blamed for winds”: Research by the Met Office and Prof Keith Browning, of the University of Reading, discovered the phenomenon and coined the phrase. Sting jets occur in cyclones when there is a dramatic fall in the barometric pressure.

Posted 20 Jan 05 | Permalink | Tell a Friend