page_title: Weather front
section_title: Squall line
hierarchical_section_title: Weather front / Types / Squall line
caption_attribution_description: English: Shelf cloud.
context_page_description: A weather front is a boundary separating bands of thunderstorms and severe weather, and may on occasion be preceded by squall lines or dry lines. Warm fronts are usually preceded by stratiform precipitation and fog. The weather usually clears quickly after a front's passage. Some fronts produce no precipitation and little cloudiness, although there is invariably a wind shift.
  Cold fronts and occluded fronts generally move from west to east, while warm fronts move poleward. Because of the greater density of air in their wake, cold fronts and cold occlusions move faster than warm fronts and warm occlusions. Mountains and warm bodies of water can slow the movement of fronts. When a front becomes stationary—and the density contrast across the frontal boundary vanishes—the front can degenerate into a line which separates regions of differing wind velocity, known as a shearline. This is most common over the open ocean.
context_section_description: Organized areas of thunderstorm activity not only reinforce pre-existing frontal zones, but can outrun cold fronts in a pattern where the upper level jet splits apart into two streams, with the resultant Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) forming at the point of the upper level split in the wind pattern running southeast into the warm sector parallel to low-level thickness lines. When the convection is strong and linear or curved, the MCS is called a squall line, with the feature placed at the leading edge of the significant wind shift and pressure rise.  Even weaker and less organized areas of thunderstorms lead to locally cooler air and higher pressures, and outflow boundaries exist ahead of this type of activity, which can act as foci for additional thunderstorm activity later in the day.
  These features are often depicted in the warm season across the United States on surface analyses and lie within surface troughs. If outflow boundaries or squall lines form over arid regions, a haboob may result. Squall lines are depicted on NWS surface analyses as an alternating pattern of two red dots and a dash labelled SQLN or SQUALL LINE, while outflow boundaries are depicted as troughs with a label of OUTFLOW BOUNDARY.
caption: A shelf cloud such as this one can be a sign that a squall is imminent
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