A sting jet is a narrow core of violent winds that sometimes form within the rapidly intensifying North Atlantic and North Pacific extratropical cyclones, developing powerful windstorms towards the ground. Sting jets are associated with the strongest and most damaging windstorms, resulting in violent, hurricane-force winds. How do they form?
The official definition of this meteorological phenomenon is the following:
The most damaging extratropical cyclones go through an evolution that involves the formation of a bent-back front and cloud head separated from the main polar front cloud band by a dry slot. When the cyclone is very close to reaching its minimum central pressure, the trailing tip of the cloud head bounding the bent-back front forms a hook that goes on to encircle the seclusion of warm air.
The highest winds occur near the tip (nose) of this hook, the sting at the end of the tail.
Sounds a bit too scientific? Well, it’s not that complicated. Let’s find out.
A sting jet definition
Deep North Atlantic cyclones often graze into western Europe with damaging winds and waves. Some are violent and cause significant tree and structural damage. There have been Storm Eunice, Storm Leslie, Storm Jorge, and Storm Ophelia in recent years.
The most recent violent Atlantic storm was Éowyn on January 24th, 2025. Storm Éowyn brought destructive wind gusts associated with a textbook sting jet visible on the satellite imagery.
Above: Textook example of a string jet with storm Éowyn
Sting jet is the meteorological phenomenon blamed for producing violent, hurricane-force winds with the most notable events. This phenomenon results in a swath of particularly intense winds, often leading to peak wind gusts well above 150 km/h (90 mph). Sometimes even surpassing 200 km/h (125 mph), causing extensive severe damage.
Above: Water vapor satellite image of Storm Jorge
A sting jet is a relatively narrow zone of the very powerful wind maximum, originating from inside the mid-tropospheric cloud head within the explosive cyclogenesis or a bomb cyclone in the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean.
How does a sting jet form?
The extratropical cyclone has two frontal zones, the warm front and the cold front following it. A strong flow of cold air develops into the cyclone ahead of the warm front, known as the cold conveyor belt.
Behind the main cold front, a colder and much drier air mass, often originating from the Arctic region, flows towards the cyclone’s core. It forms a dry intrusion towards the center of a deepening low. The dry intrusion is typically rounding the low, emerging from the southwest direction.
Above: Textook example of a sting jet
The cold conveyor belt brings cold and moist air and precipitation, such as rain and snow, toward the center of the rapidly developing extratropical storm. At the same time, the dry intrusion brings cooler and very dry air into the cyclone.
As the precipitation from the cold conveyor belt falls into the layers of air within the dry intrusion streak, droplets quickly evaporate, further cooling the air mass. This process is known as evaporative cooling.
Above: Schematic view of a Sting Jet Formation
At the final stage of the sting jet process, strong winds descend towards the surface and intensify further as the air parcels dry out. These winds graze through the layers as the air evaporates on the nose of this descending jet. Thus, the evaporative cooling process creates a clear path through the precipitation, making the air much denser within the jet.
The result is the acceleration of the downward momentum or, in other words, very strong winds are pushed down with higher force towards the tip of the cloud head when it wraps around the cyclone dead center.
Above: Banded cloud head on the nose of a Sting jet
All these processes with the sting jet occur at altitudes up to about 3-4 km above sea level. The cooled air, much denser than the surrounding air, descends rapidly to the surface, producing even stronger winds within the cyclone’s already intense wind field. The entire region of this cooled, accelerated airflow is narrow, forming what is known as a sting jet.
Once the sting jet is fully developed, satellite imagery makes this wind maximum easily recognizable. The shape of the cyclone’s comma cloud is hooked, just like a scorpion’s tail, which gives this dangerous wind region its famous name.
The composite satellite image above hints at the textbook example of a cyclone overlapped with a scorpion’s tail. It looks familiar.
As mentioned, a sting jet usually affects only a small region of about 100-200 km (100-125 miles) across and is compared to the size of the parent large bomb cyclone pretty narrow. The phenomenon usually lasts only several hours, but destructive winds will occur if it spreads across the land.
Above: Wind analysis across the extratropical cyclone
When we see Atlantic storms developing rapidly or explosively, we can expect their typical satellite appearance of the banded cloud heads to result in sting jets. The cloud head is strongly curved towards the cyclone’s core, where the most intense winds will likely blast towards the surface.
These cloud bands on the edge of the comma cloud will disappear quite sharply on the nose of the sting jet. This happens due to the strong evaporation of the air parcels within the dry intrusion.
How do we forecast these events?
Sting jets are difficult to forecast as they are relatively small and depend on how the cyclonic system has developed from its initial stages. However, with the current high-resolution weather model forecast charts, we can recognize the streaks of particularly violent winds inside the strong wind field with the cyclone in general.
Above: An example of wind gusts forecast
Of course, as we have seen above, we can also spot the sting jet developing on satellite images using various channels and spectrums. As we learned, the end of the cold conveyor belt hints at the sting by a hook-shaped cloud. Like the sting in a scorpion’s tail, the cloud’s appearance can also hint that this wind maximum has developed.
We often use satellite images representing the amount of water vapor in the air, usually made up of light and dark shades. The darker the shade is painted, the less water vapor is present there. As we know, clouds are made when water vapor condenses into water droplets, but around the sting jet, dark fingers of air stretch out, telling us that the rollercoaster of wind is also very dry—a small core of fast-moving, cold, dense, dry air.
Notable past weather events
Not every deep extratropical cyclone develops a sting jet, which is still rare. Sting jets have been confirmed on only about two dozen of the most intense cyclones over western and central Europe or the northern Pacific.
In January 2025, storm Éowyn had a pronounced sting jet, which grazed across Ireland and Scotland on January 24th. The video animation below is a 36-hour sequence of its evolution from the North Atlantic across Western Europe.
A textbook satellite presentation of a sting jet phenomenon is visible as it develops west of Ireland, moves across Northern Ireland, and spreads across northern England and southern Scotland.
The peak wind gusts set a new Ireland record, with 184 km/h recorded at the weather station Mace Head in the early morning hours when a sting jet blasted the western coasts. More than 700k residents ended up without power across Ireland and the UK, numerous trees were down, including overturned trucks, and significant damage to buildings.
The following infrared satellite animation represents a severe windstorm that hit Scotland on January 3rd, 2012, with a textbook appearance of a sting jet.
The same storm also produced winds up to 172 km/h in Ijmuiden, the Netherlands.
The Isle of Wight, the largest and second-most populous island of England, reported a record-breaking wind gust of 196 km/h (122 mph) for England during the windstorm Eunice on February 18th, 2022. This wind gust has surpassed the previous record of 190 km/h (118 mph) set at Gwennap Head, Cornwall, in 1979.
Ex-hurricane Leslie’s violent windstorm on October 14th, 2018, brought wind gusts up to 176.4 km/h (109.6 mph) in Figueira da Foz, Vila Verde, Portugal. Extensive damage was reported in the town, with numerous uprooted trees, severely damaged roofs, and overturned trailers along the highways.
Above: Radar image of Storm Leslie with damaging sting jet
The infamous Great Storm of 1987 produced a sting jet with wind gusts peaking at 217 km/h (135 mph), recorded at Pointe Du Roc, Granville, France.
An intense cyclone Oratia (Tora in Norway) in late October and early November of 2000 produced winds gusting up to 176 km/h (110 mph) in Camaret-Sur-Mer, France).
Most recently, a destructive hurricane Milton, in the Gulf of Mexico, made landfall near Tampa, Florida, on October 9th, 2024.
Once the hurricane’s eye went ashore, its backside developed a sting jet as the storm was already rapidly transitioning into an extratropical cyclone at the time of Florida’s impact. The radar image below represents this sting jet wind maximum before it hit the coastal areas south of Tampa and Sarasota, causing significant wind damage and storm surge.
Here are more details on some of the major windstorms in Western Europe and elsewhere over the recent decade:
- Destructive windstorm Eunice across Western Europe – February 18th, 2022
- The most intense Bomb Cyclone of Winter Season 2021/22 in the North Atlantic – February 7th, 2022
- Windstorm Alex hits Brittany, France, and English Channel – October 2nd, 2020
- A bomb cyclone Jorge – February 28th, 2020
- A powerful deep cyclone along the Pacific Northwest, U.S. – November 26th, 2019
- Extensive wind damage to western Portugal during landfall of Storm Leslie – October 14th, 2018
- Storm Ophelia brings 191 km/h gust recorded at Fastnet Lighthouse, SW Ireland – October 16th, 2017
- Powerful windstorm across Brittany, NW France – March 6th, 2017
For extra scientific reading, here’s an in-depth article on Windstorms over the North Atlantic: Climatology and Contribution to Extreme Wind Risk.