While the rain that fell on Monday evening was welcome, the storms also brought along damaging winds and some hail. The storms also produced a heat burst event, which was nicely captured by the Knoxville AWOS site as shown by the featured chart. Heat bursts are produced behind thunderstorm complexes as warm air is forced to the ground. This air continues to warm as it descends and since no water is being added, its relative humidity drops resulting in warm and dry air at the surface. The classic signature, as shown in the chart, is a rapid increase in temperature and decrease in dew point at a surface observation site. These events tend to be very windy as well with the site reporting a gust over 70 mph. Note that the chart would indicate the gust lasting for a number of minutes, but that is most likely a quirk with how wind gusts are reported by the sensor.

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Tags:   heatburst