Heat bursts: rapid rise in nighttime temps

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1:11
A burst of snow this evening, cold and active through the weekend
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2:11
What to expect Wednesday afternoon as snow moves in
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2:18
Expecting widespread winter weather impacts to tonight’s evening...
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4:47
South Bend gears up for this years Polar Plunge Fundraiser
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2:00
Winter weather advisory in effect later today; unpleasant evening...
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3:13
Water service line replacements and infrastructure improvements...
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3:37
Local farms ‘losing sleep’ over bird flu concerns
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2:59
Indiana School Board races could become partisan
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2:33
A burst of snow Wednesday evening
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0:25
Multiple departments respond to Benton Harbor house fire
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1:50
Beyond the Kitchen collaborates with other local non-profits...
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1:43
Uneventful Tuesday gives way to a potential winter storm Wednesday
Heat bursts are very rare, but they can be a surprising sight to anyone who experiences it. The process is similar to how a downburst or a microburst forms, and we've already seen that earlier this summer around the Niles area. What's unique about a heat burst is the fact that the air coming from the thunderstorm is warm and dry!
It all starts in a decaying thunderstorm. The downdraft carrying the rain showers, pushes towards the ground, thanks to the fact that it's much cooler and more dense than the environment around the thunderstorm. As the dense air falls towards the ground, it heats up and dries out, thanks to a process called compression. Once that dense air, now hot and dry, hits the ground, it fans out in all directions. Similar to a microburst.

Heat bursts themselves are very rare, so we need special conditions for ones to occur. First off, we need a decaying thunderstorm. Second, the starting point of the downdraft has to be fairly high up in the sky, allowing that cooler, denser air to really pick up speed as it moves toward the ground. Also, we need dry air just below the thunderstorm.

In some extreme cases, intense heat bursts have been known to suck all of the moisture out of vegetation!