Tornadoes

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Tornado

Introduction
Can you imagine winds of 320 miles per hour heading your way? Incredible as it may seem, a F-5 tornado has the potential of creating such a nightmarish reality, bringing death and destruction in its wake.
A tornado can be the most horrific and dangerous of all natural disasters. It has the power to kill and destroy everyone and everything in its path. Houses have been lifted from their foundations, thrown through the air and then dumped thousands of feet from their original location. Buildings can be left sitting in the same place but simply shredded; and others can be uprooted and transported to another location where they are set down with little damage.














What is a Tornado?

The English Collins Dictionary defines a tornado as “a violent storm with winds whirling around a small area of extremely low pressure, usually characterised by a dark funnel-shaped cloud causing damage along its path”.

It is also usually defined as a violently rotating column of air extending downward from a thunderstorm and which is in contact with the ground. Enormous amounts of damage can be caused by a tornado as a result of the high velocity winds and wind-blown debris.

With out Thunderstorms, tornadoes can not be born. All thunderstorms require instability (potential) and lift. The lift is the mechanism that releases the instability. Lift is produced by such things as fronts (1) and low pressure troughs, or by air rising upslope (2)
(1) A front is defined as the transition zone between two air masses of different density. Fronts extend not only in the horizontal direction, but in the vertical as well. Therefore, when referring to the frontal surface (or frontal zone), we referring to both the horizontal and vertical components of the front.
(2) When air is confronted by a mountain, it is lifted up and over the mountain, cooling as it rises. If the air cools to its saturation point, the wa...