A case study of comma cloud development in the eastern Pacific ( California).

Abstract

The first sign of the development was the appearance of a region of enhanced convection in the northwesternly flow behind an amplifying large-scale trough and ahead of an embedded short-wave trough. As the development progressed, the cloud field expanded and assumed the comma shape. The surface low center formed within the comma head during the phase of rapid organization and strengthening of the convection. Detailed surface and upper air analyses of the system over California during the mature stage revealed that the disturbance was at this stage associated with a weakly baroclinic region in the lower and middle troposphere and was capped by a strong upper-tropospheric frontal zone. -from Authors