Storm cell

A storm cell is an air mass that contains up and down drafts in convective loops and that moves and reacts as a single entity, functioning as the smallest unit of a storm-producing system.

An organized grouping of thunder clouds will thus be considered as a series of storm cells with their up/downdrafts being independent or interfering one with the other.

[1] A storm cell can extend over an area the size of a few tens of square miles/kilometers and last 30 minutes or so.

[2] When the updraft and the environmental wind shear is well coordinated, the size and the duration of the cell can be much greater leading to a supercell.

[3] One can distinguish three stages in the evolution of a thunderstorm cell:[2][3] This article about atmospheric science is a stub.