[--MAIN HOME--] [--ALL HABYHINTS--] [--FACEBOOK PAGE--] HOW HIGH CAN STRONG STORM UPDRAFTS REACH? METEOROLOGIST JEFF HABY Air can rise as long as the air is in an unstable environment that allows the air to rise due to positive buoyancy or if the air is rising due to momentum. The potential for this exists anywhere in the troposphere and through a portion of the tropopause but can not occur in the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere that is called to stratosphere. It can not occur in the stratosphere since the stratosphere has an extremely stable temperature profile. The troposphere extends basically from the sea level surface (which averages around 1013 mb) to 150 mb. When a storm updraft rises to about the 150 mb level, if it is unstable all the way up to this level, the updraft will encounter stable air in the layer known as the tropopause. The tropopause is the transition from the troposphere to the stratosphere. This will cause the updraft to decelerate and to eventually stop. This puts a typical limit on storm top penetration to around the 100 mb level which is typically around ~16 kilometers / ~10 miles / ~ 53,000 feet.