Ask the Meteorologist: What is the ring of fire and its impact on storms in our area?

You may have heard the song "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. Maybe you've even heard of the part of the Pacific Rim where earthquakes and volcanoes often happen.

This is a weather article, though, so we're not talking about either of those things. 

The high pressure that causes intense heat is often called a "heat dome."

We're seeing heat alerts from the Desert Southwest to the Intermountain West, the Great Plains to the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River Valley to the Deep South.

On the outer edges of the high, storm clusters will often form.

The technical term for these clusters is MCS (mesoscale convective system). For the purposes of simplicity, we'll just call them storm clusters. 

These storm clusters ride the strong upper-level winds on the outer edges of hot high pressure, and they can travel for hundreds of miles before fizzling out. 

In some cases, you may hear them referred to as a derecho. 

We talked about derechos in a previous edition of Ask the Meteorologist.

What sustains these storms is two-fold. 

1. The upper-level winds introduce more wind shear, which helps to sustain and back build some of these storms. 

2. The temperature difference ahead of and behind the storm clusters. 

Ahead of the cluster, the air is usually quite hot and humid. As rain cools the air beneath the storm and cool air punches in on the backside, you get more instability. 

That's the fuel that can keep these storms going for so long.

One such cluster of storms moves into our area Tuesday, though the timing is up for debate. Most data suggests our chance for strong-to-severe storms will be toward the evening. 

Localized wind damage is the main threat with any severe storm that develops Tuesday. Some storms may contain some hail, and an isolated tornado cannot be ruled out within the line of storms. 

Download the WRAL Weather App | Track rain with the DualDoppler5000