Tornadoes

Tornadoes can occur on every continent except Antarctica, but they are most common in North America. Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe can experience tornadoes. Cities in Tornado Alley, such as Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Kansas City, are most susceptible to tornadoes in the United States.

The hole in the center of a tornado is formed in a similar way to the eye of a hurricane. Low pressure inside the tornado pulls air in. As the air moves in it starts spinning faster. At a certain point the tornado is spinning so far that air cannot make it all the way to the center. Instead, air moves down the center. This process is called vortex breakdown and usually only occurs in intense tornadoes.

Tornado Alley is a region in the central United States, primarily in the southern plains, where tornadoes frequently occur. States in Tornado Alley include Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The United States and several other countries use the Enhanced Fujita scale to classify tornadoes, which is an upgraded version of the Fujita scale.

Dry air is not absolutely necessary, but moist air is. Warm, moist air carries quite a bit of energy in the form of latent heat. This latent heat is the source of energy for thunderstorms, which are in turn what cause tornadoes. The thunderstorms that produce tornadoes usually form along a cold front or dry line. A cold front occurs when a cooler air mass pushes into a warmer one. The warm air, which is less dense, rises over the cooler air, which can trigger thunderstorms. The air behind a cold front is usually drier than the air ahead of it because cool air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air.

A dry line occurs when a dry air mass pushes into a warm air mass of about the same temperature. Since dry air is denser than moist air, the moist air gets pushed up, which can trigger thunderstorms.

Tornadoes are commonly associated with low-pressure systems, particularly those that develop in the vicinity of a cold front or along a line of thunderstorms known as a squall line. The contrast between warm and cold air masses in these systems can create the conditions necessary for tornado formation.

What areas are safest depend on your home. Generally an underground basement or cellar is the best choice. The next best option would be an interior room, hallway, or closest on the lowest floor of the house. A bathroom and especially a bathtub on the lowest floor often offer good protection. If you live in a mobile home you should leave it for a sturdier structure.

Yes, tornadoes are most likely to form between 3pm and 9pm. This timeframe typically corresponds with the peak heating of the day, creating conditions that are more conducive to severe weather and tornado formation.

Tornadoes primarily impact the atmosphere and lithosphere by causing destruction and changes in weather patterns. While they can lead to flooding and affect water bodies, their direct effect on the hydrosphere is minimal compared to other natural disasters like hurricanes.

A tornado can cause significant disruption to the geosphere by reshaping the land through erosion and deposition. It can uproot trees, remove topsoil, and alter the landscape by creating new channels or scars in the Earth's surface. Additionally, the intense winds of a tornado can transport debris over long distances, further impacting the geosphere.

Tornadoes and blizzards are both severe weather phenomena that can cause significant damage and pose risks to human life. They both involve strong, rotating winds, although tornadoes form in thunderstorms and blizzards occur during winter storms with snow and strong winds.

Yes, tornadoes can cause trenches in the ground as they can pick up and move large amounts of dirt and debris with their powerful winds. This can result in the excavation of trenches or ditches along the tornado's path as it uproots trees, overturns objects, and digs into the ground.

Predicting a tornado allows us to warn people in the path, allowing them to get to a safe place before it hits. In the days before we had tornado warnings many people were killed or injured because tornadoes caught them unprepared.

Moving over a warm body of water may cause a tornado to gain strength. The flat surface will allow the tornado's winds to move largely unimpeded by friction. Moisture evaporating from the warm surface may also provide extra energy fro the storm. A cold body of water may cause the storm to weaken if it is large enough.

During a tornado, a drop in air pressure near the roof creates a pressure difference between the inside and outside of the building. This pressure difference causes an uplift force on the roof due to Bernoulli's principle, where air moves faster over the roof, creating a lower pressure on top that can lift the roof off.

Hills and mountains can, to some degree, disrupt thunderstorms from organizing, making tornadoes less likely. Overall, through, tornadoes are more influenced by climate than topography. It just so happens that the most tornado-prone region in the world, the central U.S., is also quite flat.

The central United States, often referred to as "Tornado Alley," is a hot spot for tornadoes due to the collision of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico with cold, dry air from the Rocky Mountains. States like Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska experience a high frequency of tornadoes each year.

Severe thunderstorms would probably be the answer.

They can produce strong winds in more than one way. First, they can produce winds via a downburst which is a strong downdraft that occurs during a thunderstorm, and the causes strong, straight-line winds that can sometimes exceed 130 mph. In some cases downbursts can occur along a line of severe storms, resulting in a phenomenon called a derecho.

Another way thunderstorms can produce strong winds is through a rear-flank downdraft or RFD, a descending mass of dry air associated with the mesocyclone, or rotating updraft, of a supercell. The RFD can produce winds in excess of 100 mph. It is also believed to play an essential role in tornado formation.

Waterspouts are often thought to be less "deadly" than tornadoes because there is not really any property for them to pick up/destroy: They generally are not carrying gigantic amounts of debris to cause destruction, and hardly any human lives are at risk.

However, they ARE tornadoes - just on water- They have "deadly" winds (think about how heavy all that water is).

While fair-weather waterspouts rarely produce winds over 70 mph, tornadic waterspouts can be just as strong as any tornado.

Sometimes. Tornadoes often form in a rain-free portion of their parent thunderstorms and the rain, wind, and hail often let up a few minutes before the tornado arrives. Some people have noted an eerie silence. In other cases a tornado may be shrouded in rain, and heavy rain continues even as the tornado strikes. Such rain-wrapped tornadoes are particularly dangerous because you can't see them coming.

Tornadoes generally are not a major cause of erosion.While tornadoes produces very intense winds, exposures is generally quite brief, and it is extremely rare for any given spot to be hit by one. In some cases tornado winds can sour away soil.

Contrary to popular belief, the size and shape of a tornado is not a very good indicator of intensity. In 1995 an elephant trunk tornado struck the outskirts of Pampa, Texas. Using video analysis, tornado expert Thomas Grazulis estimated the wind speed to be approximately 300 miles per hour (480 km/h).

No. The reality is that 75% of Earth's recorded tornadoes occur in the United States. The United States is one of few countries to actively monitor and survey tornadoes within its borders, so most tornadoes that strike the U.S. are recorded. In most other countries the majority of tornadoes likely never get recorded, resulting in highly inaccurate statistics.

It is impossible to say with any certainty. In an average year, there are about 1,800 tornadoes recorded worldwide, most of them in the United States. The true number of tornadoes is probably several times higher. Most countries do not conduct storm surveys and so the majority of the world's tornadoes go unrecorded.