Here are the Tornado Facts you should know
Tornado Facts – A tornado, sometimes called a twister, is one of nature’s most violent phenomena that can cause danger to people’s lives and properties.
Here are the amazing facts about this phenomenon.
This is created by supercell thunderstorms
Based on the article in Smithsonian Magazine, only one in thousands of storms yields a supercell thunderstorm and one of the supercells creates a tornado.
Warm air rises, cold air falls, and rough winds whip within the storm system. With this, an updraft occurs and when it rotates, it descends toward the ground. This goes below the storm and with this, a tornado can emerge.
The strongest winds are closest to the ground
Normally, the winds get stronger the higher you go in the atmosphere but when it comes to tornadoes, this is reversed. A tornado’s strongest winds appear at the lowest points.
It can form anywhere, anytime
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in a downtown part of the city, in a hilly area or even a mountainous area,” Jana Houser, a supercell thunderstorm and tornado radar analysis expert at Ohio State University, said.
It has a uniquely powerful upward motion
A tornado has a speed of 100- or 200-mile-an-hour winds shooting up toward the sky. This is the reason why the damage that a tornado can make with that speed is different from the effect of the exact same mile-per-hour wind from just a thunderstorm.
A tornado’s behavior can be affected by terrain
Differing terrain can make it hard for meteorologists to chart the exact path of a tornado. Houser said tornadoes “defy generalization.”
It usually rotates counterclockwise but can switch directions
The tornado’s counterclockwise motion has long been attributed to the Coriolis effect. This is the force created by the rotation of the Earth. However, Houser said that this is merely a myth as she said, “too small a space scale and time scale for the Coriolis force to affect it.” The expert said that the counterclockwise motion is because of how vertical winds change in speed and height within the storm.
Other facts:
- Storms can produce more than one tornado at a time
- The air pressure inside a tornado can cause just as much damage as the wind itself
- Climate change can affect the formation of tornadoes
- Tornadoes themselves can’t be forecast but the conditions that produce them can be
Another calamity that cannot be forecast is earthquakes. The biggest earthquakes in the world have caused the death of many people.