mesocyclones questions

[mesocyclone]

Okay, I have been interested in weather all of my life and have poked around at learning things here and there but now i would like to get serious and learn as much as i can.
So if no one minds im going to make this section my question asking / learning section.
Many of my questions may seem dumb and obvious to most of you but i have this urge to learn everything i can and i have found that it comes best by speaking to
people directly as opposed to trying to find it on my own, which i try and do but info is very scattered on the web, so here i go.
I seem to understand things better given illustrations, i need to understand exactly how something works in order to understand it fully and be satisfied with my understanding of it. ( haha understand?)

I believe i need to understand the basics of airflow around the earth, i guess, the way the different air cells move -
(hadley, ferrel and polar cells).

The way different air pressures move around the earth...

I dont understand the air pressure thing, how there are different areas of pressure at different levels of the atmosphere. How far up does a certain area of pressure exist?
I guess i am so used to looking at weather maps showing the horizontal plane but not the vertical plane of atmosphere.
What is the 500 - 1000mb thickness, what are the boundaries of this? Please help!!!

[wjs3]

Mesocyclone:

Cool.

Listen, I appreciate that you wnat a lot of this explained to you, and there are some great online/correspondence courses out there (Penn Sate has one, and Mississippi State has one too) if you want to take actual classes in meteo. That's what I did and it was a blast.

I wish I could start answering all your general circulation questions, but there's SO MUCH behind that question, and others online have done a better job of explaining it than I can. For a good, free overview of most everything "weather", I am partial to the University of Illinois website:

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/home.rxml

I have spent many hours reading through this site and think it's a great way to get going on some weather stuff. Also see my posts (and wxmann91's posts) below to Misshurricane regarding some modules form the Penn Satae program and the Haby hints (from the Mississippi State program).

Once you've taken a look, I'd be glad (though I am no pro met) to try to answer any question I can.

WJS3