Squall

[1] Known locally as pamperos, these are characterized as strong downsloped winds that move across the pampas, eventually making it to the Atlantic Ocean.

[8][verification needed] In southeastern Australia, the colloquial name for a squall is southerly buster, which is an abrupt southerly wind change in the southern regions of New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, which approaches from the southeast, mainly on a hot day, bringing in cool, usually severe weather and a dramatic temperature drop, thus ultimately replacing and relieving the prior hot conditions.

[9] Offshore Central America, a gully squall is characterized by strong increases of the wind forced through sharp mountain valleys on the Pacific Ocean side of the isthmus.

[15] The strong winds at the surface are usually a reflection of dry air intruding into the line of storms, which when saturated, falls quickly to ground level due to its much higher density before it spreads out downwind.

With downdrafts ushering colder air from mid-levels, hitting ground and propagating away in all directions, high pressure is to be found widely at surface levels, usually indicative of strong (potentially damaging) winds.

In low to medium shear environments, mature thunderstorms will contribute modest amounts of downdrafts, enough to turn will aid in create a leading edge lifting mechanism – the gust front.

The cold air outflow leaves the trailing area of the squall line to the mid-level jet, which aids in downdraft processes.

As thunderstorms fill into a distinct line, strong leading-edge updrafts – occasionally visible to a ground observer in the form of a shelf cloud – may appear as an ominous sign of potential severe weather.

Because of the coriolis force, the poleward end may evolve further, creating a "comma shaped" mesolow, or may continue in a squall-like pattern.

As supercells and multi-cell thunderstorms dissipate due to a weak shear force or poor lifting mechanisms, (e.g. considerable terrain or lack of daytime heating) the squall line or gust front associated with them may outrun the squall line itself and the synoptic scale area of low pressure may then infill, leading to a weakening of the cold front; essentially, the thunderstorm has exhausted its updrafts, becoming purely a downdraft dominated system.

From here, a general thinning of a squall line will occur: with winds decaying over time, outflow boundaries weakening updrafts substantially and clouds losing their thickness.

Tropical cyclones normally have squalls coincident with spiral bands of greater curvature than many mid-latitude systems due to their smaller size.

These squalls can harbor waterspouts and tornadoes due to the significant vertical wind shear which exists in the vicinity of a tropical cyclone's outer bands.