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SPRING IS TORNADO SEASON
by N2 Weather Specialist
Keisha James
What is a Tornado?
A tornado is a violently spinning
column of air that stretches from the cloud to the ground. All tornadoes have a
"V" shaped funnel cloud but a funnel cloud...which sometimes drops from a
cloud...is not a tornado unless it reaches the ground. Some tornadoes may not
have a visible funnel. Tornadoes can only be seen if clouds or rain get caught
in the funnel cloud or if the tornado picks up dirt or debris from the ground.
Where do tornadoes come from?
Tornadoes come from thunderstorms. Many
strong thunderstorms form and never come close to producing tornadoes. Even when
the ingredients look really good for tornadic thunderstorms, as in a Tornado
Watch, not every thunderstorm forms a tornado. The truth is that we don't fully
understand why some strong thunderstorms develop tornadoes and some don't. The
most destructive and deadly tornadoes happen in supercells - which are
thunderstorms with a spinning center. If the winds at different heights of the
thunderstorm are coming from different directions, the storm will begin to spin
and a supercell may form.
Where do tornadoes happen?
Tornadoes have occurred in every state
in the United States. Most strong tornadoes happen in the central plains of the
United States, especially in states like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas but they can
happen in any state. They also occur in many other parts of the world, including
Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America.
When do tornadoes happen?
Tornadoes can occur on any day of the
year and at any hour. Most strong or violent tornadoes form during the spring
and summer; the tornado season comes early in the spring in the south because
the area warms earlier. In the southern states, most tornadoes occur from March
through May, while main months in the northern states are during the summer. In
some states, including Mississippi, a second short tornado season occurs in the
fall. Tornadoes are most likely to occur between 3 and 9 p.m. but have been
known to occur at all hours of the day or night.
What makes tornadoes dangerous?
Tornadoes are dangerous because of the
strong winds they make. Winds in the tornado are tightened around a small
area, which makes wind speeds dangerously high. It's like ice skaters doing
spins on the ice. The skaters pull their arms in close to their body to spin
really fast. When the storm winds can somehow be drawn into a smaller spinning
column, the winds really speed up. Tornado wind can be as high as 300 mph in the
most violent tornadoes. Wind speeds that high can throw cars, rip homes
apart and turn broken glass and other garbage (called debris) into deadly flying
missiles. The biggest danger to people from tornadoes is from flying debris and
from being thrown around in the wind.
How how long do they last?
Most tornadoes move around 30 or 40
miles an hour but tornado speed can be anything from zero, where they sit over
one spot until they die, or as fast as 70 mph. Most tornadoes move from the
southwest to the northeast, but tornadoes have been known to move in any
direction. They can last from several seconds to more than an hour. The
longest-lived tornado in history is really unknown, because so many of the
long-lived tornadoes reported from the early 1900s and before are now believed
to have been a set of several tornadoes instead of one single tornado. Most
tornadoes last less than 10 minutes.
TORNADO ILLUSTRATION
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