CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – While many of us were dry on Saturday, some in Hampden County saw thunderstorms that brought heavy rain.

Some areas across western Massachusetts had brief thunderstorms Saturday while many areas had nothing at all. There are three main ingredients you need for thunderstorm formation. Moisture, unstable air, and some sort of lift in the atmosphere.

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It all seems complicated, but on a warm day, you already have two of those. Warm and moist air. If it were to stay near the ground, that would be an unstable atmosphere, so there is the third ingredient.

This all starts to create an updraft, which is an upward current of warm and moist air. This will create the cloud we see in the sky and once there is enough water vapor, then the clouds start to produce rain and sometimes you can even see lightning and see thunder. Once the updrafts (or upward current of motion) stop, that’s when a storm starts to become weak. This will then give us less rain and eventually the clouds will clear leaving us with a sunny day again.