Topic: Pressure systems and fronts

[hf17]

This might be a really stupid question, but why do fronts only form around low pressure systems?

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Do you mean:  "Why are cold fronts associated with low pressure systems,and warm fronts associated with high pressure systems?"  Then there's the occluded cold/warm/cool sandwich and the stationary rock'n'uh'hard-place  hand-wrestle of cold/warm, etc.

[CW2274]

warm fronts associated with high pressure systems

Ridges have no fronts.

https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/WXBasics/WXBasics-Fronts.pdf

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

warm fronts associated with high pressure systems

Ridges have no fronts.

https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/WXBasics/WXBasics-Fronts.pdf

.... perhaps it's a perspective / semantic convention?
  A front is the boundary between two air masses of
different temperatures.
A ridge is a line of relatively high pressure out of a defined high....doesn't the ridge and associated high drive the warm air into the cold mass?.

[CW2274]

warm fronts associated with high pressure systems

Ridges have no fronts.

https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/WXBasics/WXBasics-Fronts.pdf

doesn't the ridge and associated high drive the warm air into the cold mass?.

Only because there's a trough preceeding it. No trough, no front.

[TheBushPilot]

This might be a really stupid question, but why do fronts only form around low pressure systems?

Firstly, there are no stupid questions, unless it is legitimately stupid. Which this one is not, only those that are unasked in my opinion are.

If I understand your question right, you're referring to cyclogenesis and the fronts associated with them? I don't know enough about meteorology to for sure say they only form on low pressure systems but that sounds right. From my understanding it's just the nature of the contiguous United States and the topography that influences the structure of the mesoscale systems that occur here. Like every Nat Geo documentary talking about tornado formation, you've got a jet coming from over the Rockies in the west, as that evolves it produces a cyclone. With that cyclone you simultaneously have a Bermuda high (high pressure situated around the Bermuda region in the ocean) pushing moisture up through the gulf and into the low system causing warm air advection. As that low propagates east north eastward or really where ever it wants to go you've got the cold air from the north and west butting up against that warm southerly flow. Thereby creating fronts. From what I understand that's how it works.

If anyone is more knowledgeable please correct me if I got anything wrong or add to what I've said.

Hopefully that answers your question.

Cheers,

Quinton

[CW2274]

Fronts are the same the world over. The big difference is that in the northern hemisphere, cyclones rotate counter-clockwise, in the southern, clockwise.