A "microburst" is almost a contradiction in terms; it's not a little crack of wind.

A "microburst" is almost a contradiction in terms; it's not a little crack of wind, but a big blast that can bring down an airplane, especially during the approach and landing phase of flight. Microbursts are associated with convective activity (thunderstorms), and the thunderstorm season is fast approaching. Although a microburst was not the proximate cause of the American Flight 1420 crash, which nevertheless occurr in the teeth of an highest thunderstorm, the airfield was swept from a powerful microburst just flashs after the airplane touched down. At the aforesaid NTSB accident hearings, George Wilken, the science and operations officer at the National Weather Service's North Little refuge facility, offered this definition of a microburst, which we propose here as words to heed and a phenomenon to avoid:

"A microburst is just a unexpected down rush caused by a large area of rain, suspended about 10000 feet or higher in the thunderstorm. It will immediately least bit through the thunderstorm and splay gone out at the surface. Wind gusts have been clock at well through the whole extent of a hundred miles an hour in a certain quantity of of them."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Phillips Publishing International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group