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The Causes & Effects of Tornadoes

Damage Caused by a Tornado

Tornadoes occur where unstable air creates wind funnels that destroy homes and uproot trees. This happens when updrafts of warm and wet air collide with cold air. Tornadoes primarily develop across the Great Plains in the United States in an area referred to as tornado alley. Tornado alley covers land in the lowland areas of the Mississippi River, the lower Missouri River valleys and Ohio. The states affected include Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and Florida.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

When cold air meets warm and wet air, the surrounding air currents become unstable, air pressure drops and the conditions for tornado creation are ripe. The effects of these devastating storms include:

People killed or seriously injured
Mobile homes completely flattened
Homes ripped from their foundations
Livestock lost or destroyed
Cars tumbled and damaged
Landscaping destroyed

The largest tornado touched down in May of 2013 near Moore, Oklahoma resulting in a path of destruction that spanned 2.6 miles across and 16.2 miles long. Though it had winds in excess of 295 mph, the tornado itself was an EF-3 tornado on the enhanced Fujita scale, a measurement that determines the strength of a tornado's winds.

How Tornadoes Form

Tornadoes develop in weather conditions where three different layers of air combine in a specific way. The three air layers consist of a layer of warm and humid air with strong south winds near the ground, cold air in the upper atmosphere pushed around by strong west and southwest winds and a very warm, dry layer of air sandwiched between these upper and lower air levels.

The middle layer provides a cover which allows the ground atmosphere to warm some more, making all the air in the system unstable. When a storm cell above moves east, it lifts the multiple layers, removing the cap in the middle layer that results in strong updrafts. The exchange between the updrafts and surrounding storm winds can cause the rotating effect that generates the wind funnel known as a tornado.

When Tornadoes Form

Tornado season requires the right conditions. This includes a layer of moist warm air near the ground, which primarily occurs during spring and summer thunderstorms. For the southern states, this season runs from March through May, but in the northern climes, tornadoes occur in the summertime. Somewhere between 800 and 1,000 tornadoes touch down in an average tornado season across the U.S., resulting in about $850 million in property damages each season.

Enhanced Fujita Scale and Damage Extent

Tornadoes get their ratings from the strength of their winds, which can also determine the damages they cause. The Fujita scale gets its name from the scientist who introduced it in 1971, Tetsuya Fujita. In 2007, an updated version called the Enhanced Fujita scale that rates wind strength differently replaced the original Fujita scale. In the new version:

EF-0: 65 to 85 mph winds result in some damage to house gutters, siding and roofs. You may also see broken tree branches and small trees get pushed over.

EF-1: 86 to 110 mph winds cause damage to mobile homes including complete rollovers. Winds can strip roofs, and exterior doors to homes on foundations are often removed with windows broken.

EF-2: 111 to 135 mph winds remove roofs from well-built homes. Stick-built houses shift, mobile homes get flattened, large trees get broken and removed from the ground, and the winds can lift cars off the ground.

EF-3: 136 to 165 mph winds result in damage to multiple stories of well-built homes. Office buildings and malls experience severe damage, trains overturn, and trees lose bark. Winds throw heavy vehicles through the air, and any structure with a weak foundation is at risk of destruction.

EF-4: 166 to 200 mph winds can destroy well-constructed and stick-built homes, throw cars into the air and make debris fly everywhere.

EF-5: 200 mph winds and above devastate everything in the path of the tornado. High-rise buildings experience severe damage, and car-sized debris flies through the air.

The difference between straight line winds & tornadoes, types of typhoons, two air masses that will cause a tornado, cyclone facts for kids, at what speed does wind become a hurricane, the difference between tornadoes & hurricanes, which types of fronts & air masses bring a hurricane, the four forces that influence wind speed & wind direction, how does a tornado start, most famous tornadoes, the effects of tornadoes on humans & nature, the levels of tornadoes, how is a blizzard storm formed, tornadoes' effects on people, the average wind speed during a thunderstorm, what are the doldrums, harmful effects of cyclones, what kind of damage do thunderstorms cause, what are characteristics of tornadoes.

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research: A Terrible Tornado
Illinois State University Extension: Enhanced Fujita Scale
Washington State University: Tornado Facts
Britannica: Tetsuya Fujita

About the Author

As a journalist and editor for several years, Laurie Brenner has covered many topics in her writings, but science is one of her first loves. Her stint as Manager of the California State Mining and Mineral Museum in California's gold country served to deepen her interest in science which she now fulfills by writing for online science websites. Brenner is also a published sci-fi author. She graduated from San Diego's Coleman College in 1972.

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Find out what causes these deadly twisters—and how to stay safe.

A dark greenish tinge covers the sky, and black storm clouds threaten above. The wind roars loudly while cats hide under couches and dogs start howling. A tornado is forming.

Also known as twisters, tornadoes are violently spinning, funnel-shaped columns of air that stretch from the dark thunderclouds they form in all the way to the ground. The wind from a tornado can top 250 miles an hour—that’s faster than a race car! These extreme gusts can rip apart buildings, destroy bridges, flip trains, and send cars flying. They can even tear the bark off trees and suck all the water from a riverbed.

Tornadoes occur all over the planet, but the United States leads the world in the strength and number of storms: About a thousand twisters touch down every year. ( Argentina and Bangladesh are next.) As part of larger U.S. storm systems, they cause about 80 deaths a year and close to $1 billion in damage.

How tornadoes develop

Thunderstorms form when cold, dry air is pushed over warm, humid air. When that warm air rises through the colder air, it causes an updraft, or a change in wind direction.

If winds from the thunderstorm vary greatly in speed or direction, the updraft will begin to rotate. As the rotating updraft draws in more warm air from the moving thunderstorm, its rotation speed increases, and a funnel cloud begins to form. As the twister gains strength, the funnel becomes longer. (The funnel becomes more visible as more dirt and debris is caught in its rotation.) It’s most dangerous when it touches the ground.

The most violent tornadoes come from supercells—the name scientists give to large thunderstorms with winds already in rotation. About one in a thousand thunderstorms becomes a supercell, and one in five or six supercells creates a tornado.

For all their power, the average tornado lasts only about 10 minutes, though some can rage for over an hour. Twisters usually die when they move over colder ground or when the clouds above it start to break up.

The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 holds the record for time and distance of a tornado. Named for the three states it hit— Missouri , Illinois , and Indiana —the tornado took three and a half hours to tear through 219 miles.

Where and when tornadoes form

Although tornadoes have been spotted in every U.S. state, many form in a region called Tornado Alley. This zone in the Midwest extends from Texas to Ohio and includes Iowa , Kansas , South Dakota , Oklahoma , and Nebraska .

These states are in the path of warm, moist air traveling from the Gulf of Mexico as well as cool air blowing from the Rocky Mountains. When the warm and cool airstreams meet, tornadoes are likely to form.

Though the storms can happen at any time of the year, tornado season in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas occurs in May through early June. In North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, tornadoes are more likely to form in June or July.

Tracking tornadoes

During thunderstorms, meteorologists use weather satellites, weather balloons, and buoys to gather data like wind speed and temperature. Then they analyze that data with supercomputers. This helps scientists pinpoint where and when a twister might form, as well as how strong or long-lasting it might be.

If weather conditions are right for a tornado to form, experts issue a tornado watch for a region, like a county or large part of a state. This doesn't mean that a tornado is on the way. But it could be—meteorologists issue the watch so people can be prepared.

When a tornado is spotted or picked up on weather radar, scientists issue a tornado warning for a smaller area, like a town or part of a city. People there are urged to take cover.

Some experts actually drive into areas where storms are forming! Vehicles tricked out with special science equipment measure things like temperature, humidity, and air pressure that’s submitted to meteorologists at weather service headquarters. But the information that these “tornado chasers” gather also helps scientists better understand the science of tornados.

Thanks to these tools, meteorologists are now able to quickly predict when and where a tornado will form, giving people in a twister’s path more time to seek shelter. For instance, in the 1980s, people only had about a five-minute warning before a tornado hit; by the late 2000s, the warning time grew to 13 minutes.

How to survive a tornado

Before a tornado

• Listen to weather reports for tornado warnings. • Close all the windows. • Prepare a safe room. This can be your basement or the lowest room in the center of your house or apartment building, away from outer walls and windows. Window-free closets and bathrooms work well, too. • Fill the safe room with blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, and your family emergency kit (water, food, flashlight, and radio). • Have an emergency safety plan. If you live in a trailer or mobile home, make sure you know where to go to evacuate.

During a tornado

• Stay inside—never attempt to watch or chase a tornado. • Do not go near windows. It’s not the tornado itself that causes most injuries; it’s the flying debris—or the windows they crash through—that cause most injuries. • Cover yourself with the pillows, blankets, and sleeping bags. If there’s a sturdy piece of furniture, like a table, crawl under it. • Cover your head and neck with your arms. • If you’re caught outside and can’t find shelter, look for a ditch, gulley, or just a flat piece of ground away from trees and cars. Lie down as flat as you can and cover your head and neck with your arms. (Do not try this under a bridge or overpass.)

After a tornado

• Do not leave your shelter until local authorities give the OK. Follow their instructions. • If you go outside, watch where you step—dangerous debris can be anywhere. • Continue to monitor tornado reports. Sometimes more than one can whip up in the same place.

Learn more about tornadoes at National Geographic .

Tornado safety tips from the Nat Geo Kids book Extreme Weather by Thomas Kostigen and How to Survive Anything by Rachel Buchholz

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Tornadoes, explained

Learn how these deadly storms form and wreak havoc, and how you can reduce your risk.

Tornadoes are vertical funnels of rapidly spinning air. Their winds may top 250 miles an hour and can clear a pathway a mile wide and 50 miles long.

Also known as twisters, tornadoes are born in thunderstorms and are often accompanied by hail . Giant, persistent thunderstorms called supercells spawn the most destructive tornadoes .

These violent storms occur around the world, but the United States is a major hotspot with about a thousand tornadoes every year.

" Tornado Alley ," a region that includes the area in the eastern state of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, northern Texas, and eastern Colorado, is often home to the most powerful and destructive of these storms. U.S. tornadoes cause 80 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries per year.

What is a tornado?

A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground. It's often portended by a dark, greenish sky. Black storm clouds gather. Baseball-size hail may fall. A funnel suddenly appears, as though descending from a cloud. The funnel hits the ground and roars forward with a sound like that of a freight train approaching. The tornado tears up everything in its path.

Every U.S. state has experienced twisters, but Texas holds the record: an annual average of 120. Tornadoes have been reported in Great Britain, India, Argentina, and other countries, but they are most often seen in the United States.

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Related to tornadoes, waterspouts are weak twisters that form over warm water. They sometimes move inland and become tornadoes.

Dust devils are small, rapidly rotating columns of air that are made visible by the dust and dirt they pick up. Dust devils are not associated with thunderstorms. Either are fire tornadoes , which can spawn from wildfires.

What causes tornadoes?

The most violent tornadoes come from supercells, large thunderstorms that have winds already in rotation. About one in a thousand storms becomes a supercell, and one in five or six supercells spawns off a tornado.

Tornadoes can occur at any time of year, but they are more common during a distinct season that begins in early spring for the states along the Gulf of Mexico. The season follows the jet stream —as it swings farther north, so does tornado activity. May generally has more tornadoes than any other month, but April's twisters are sometimes more violent. Farther north, tornadoes tend to be more common later in summer.

Although they can occur at any time of the day or night, most tornadoes form in the late afternoon. By this time the sun has heated the ground and the atmosphere enough to produce thunderstorms.

Tornadoes form when warm, humid air collides with cold, dry air.

The denser cold air is pushed over the warm air, usually producing thunderstorms. The warm air rises through the colder air, causing an updraft. The updraft will begin to rotate if winds vary sharply in speed or direction.

As the rotating updraft, called a mesocycle, draws in more warm air from the moving thunderstorm, its rotation speed increases. Cool air fed by the jet stream, a strong band of wind in the atmosphere, provides even more energy.

Water droplets from the mesocyclone's moist air form a funnel cloud. The funnel continues to grow and eventually it descends from the cloud. When it touches the ground, it becomes a tornado.

Characteristics of tornadoes

Twisters are usually accompanied or preceded by severe thunderstorms and high wlnds. Hail is also common.

Once a tornado hits the ground, it may live for as little as a few seconds or as long as three hours.

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The average twister is about 660 feet wide and moves about 30 miles an hour. Most don't travel more than six miles before dying out.

Massive tornadoes, however—the ones capable of widespread destruction and many deaths—can roar along as fast as 300 miles an hour.

These measurements are scientists' best estimations. Anemometers, which measure wind speed, cannot withstand the enormous force of tornadoes to record them.

Using units F0 to F5, the Fujita scale measures a tornado's intensity by analyzing the damage the twister has done and then matching that to the wind speeds estimated to produce comparable damage. The United States now uses the EF (Enhanced Fujita) scale , which takes more variables into account when assigning wind speeds to a tornado.

Tornado destruction

Every year in the United States, tornadoes do about 400 million dollars in damage and kill about 70 people on average.

Extremely high winds tear homes and businesses apart. Winds can also destroy bridges, flip trains, send cars and trucks flying, tear the bark off trees, and suck all the water from a riverbed.

High winds sometimes kill or injure people by rolling them along the ground or dropping them from dangerous heights. But most tornado victims are struck by flying debris—roofing shingles, broken glass, doors, metal rods.

The number of average deaths per year in the United States used to be higher before improved forecasting and warning systems were put into place.

How tornadoes are forecasted

Meteorologists at the U.S. National Weather Service use Doppler radar, satellites, weather balloons, and computer modeling to watch the skies for severe storms and tornadic activity.

Doppler radars record wind speeds and identify areas of rotation within thunderstorms. Since Doppler radar has been in use, the warning time for tornadoes has grown from fewer than five minutes in the 1980s to an average of 13 minutes by the late 2000s.

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lightning striking beneath a picturesque supercell thunderstorm

When weather conditions are conducive for tornado formation, the National Weather Service issues a tornado watch. When a tornado has been sighted or indicated on radar, a tornado warning is issued.

Some scientists, meteorology buffs, and adrenaline junkies hit the road during tornado season to chase storms. Researchers race to place sensors in tornadoes' paths. The sensors measure data such as wind speed, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature.

The challenge for researchers is being in the right place at the right time. Every morning they study weather conditions and head for the area that seems most likely to spawn a twister. They drive through severe storms, dodge lightning, face flash floods, and get pounded by hail—sometimes for years—before ever spotting a tornado.

All at considerable risk. In 2013, National Geographic Explorer Tim Samaras and his team were killed while trying to study a tornado in Oklahoma . ( See photos of Samaras's work .)

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How to stay safe from tornadoes

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Tornadoes and Climate Change

Climate change will likely make extreme weather events more common. Some types of weather are easy to attribute to climate change. But with tornadoes, things are a bit more complicated.

Earth Science, Climatology, Meteorology, Geography

Tornado Minnesota Farmhouse

While the number of tornadoes in the states that make up Tornado Alley are falling, they are becoming more prevalent in some other places. Here, a tornado drops onto the central Minnesota plains, narrowly missing a farm house.

Photograph by Amanda Hill / CC BY-NC 2.0

Tornadoes have been recorded all over the world, but the United States experiences around a thousand of them each year, which is far more than anywhere else on the planet. Most of these occur in “ Tornado Alley,” an area of the Great Plains region, where the atmospheric conditions are just right for massive, tornado -spawning thunderstorms. The resulting tornadoes leave a trail of destruction in their wake, often with deadly consequences.

A Changing Climate

Scientists agree that the climate is changing, and humans are responsible. The burning of fossil fuels , such as coal, oil, and gas, releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere every year, which is leading to a rise in global temperatures, known as global warming .

Global warming is just one symptom of the larger problem of climate change . Climate change has also caused an increase in extreme weather events all over the world. “Extreme weather events” is a catch-all term for a variety of very different weather phenomena, some of which are easier to attribute to climate change than others. For example, scientists can say with a high degree of certainty that a warming planet will lead to more severe droughts in some areas and heavier rainfall in others. Unfortunately, other weather events, such as tornadoes , are much harder for climatologists to predict.

Tornadoes Are Changing

Predicting whether climate change will have an effect on the frequency and power of tornadoes is a challenge.

For all their destructive fury, tornadoes are relatively small when compared to some other extreme weather events. Hurricanes, for example, can span hundreds of miles, whereas the biggest tornado ever recorded measured 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles) wide. They are also very short lived, lasting from a few seconds to a few hours as opposed to days or weeks at a time. This makes them very difficult to model in the climate simulations that scientists use to project the effects of climate change .

Instead, scientists must attempt to predict how climate change might affect the individual weather “ingredients” that support the development of supercell thunderstorms (the type that produce tornadoes ). These weather ingredients are:

warm, moist air;
an unstable atmosphere; and
wind at different levels moving in different directions at different speeds, a phenomenon known as wind shear .

As global temperatures rise, the hotter atmosphere is able to hold more moisture. This increases atmospheric instability, a vital supercell ingredient. On the other hand, as the planet warms, wind shear (another vital ingredient) is likely to decrease. These two forces work against each other, and it is difficult to anticipate which might have a greater impact on tornado formation.

Some studies predict that climate change could provide the opportunity for more severe thunderstorms to form. However, this does not necessarily mean that more tornadoes will occur, especially in light of the fact that only about 20 percent of supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes. To complicate things further, no one fully understands how tornadoes are formed.

Climate simulations can help scientists predict what effect climate change might have in the future. They can also examine official records to see if there have been any changes in frequency and strength of tornadoes over time. Unfortunately, in the United States, tornado records only date back to the 1950s.

At first glance, there appears to have been an increase in tornadoes since these records began, but that is not the full story. It was not until the early to mid-1990s that an extensive Doppler radar network was established in the United States for the detection of tornadoes . Until then, records relied on eyewitnesses to report tornado sightings, which means that if no one saw a tornado , it would not appear on weather records. This makes it hard for researchers to spot any long-term trends because the data is skewed by an increased detection of small tornadoes and tornadoes in sparsely populated areas after Doppler radar networks were introduced.

In fact, when you remove small tornadoes from the record, the data does not suggest any long-term increase in tornado frequency. If anything, there may be a slight decline in the number of very strong tornado events. However, other research has found evidence of an increase in tornado power.

While there have been no long-term trends in thefrequency of tornadoes, there have been changes in tornado patterns in recent years. Research has shown that there are fewer days with at least one tornado but more days with over thirty, even as the total number of tornadoes per year has remained relatively stable. In other words, tornado events are becoming more clustered.

There is also evidence to suggest that tornado patterns have shifted geographically. The number of tornadoes in the states that make up Tornado Alley are falling, while tornado events have been on the rise in the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

There is speculation that some of these changes are linked to climate change and its effect on the jet stream . Tornado outbreaks have also coincided with rising ocean temperatures. But no one can say for certain that climate change is a contributing factor in these events. It is very hard to tease out which changes are down to climate change and which changes might be caused by interaction with natural climate fluctuations such as El Niño .

Is Climate Change to Blame?

The fourth National Climate Assessment summarizes the complicated relationship between tornadoes and climate change: “Some types of extreme weather (e.g. Rainfall and extreme heat) can be directly attributed global warming. Other types of extreme weather, such as Tornadoes, are also exhibiting changes which may be linked to climate change, but scientific understanding isn’t detailed enough to project direction and magnitude of future change.” In other words, we still have a lot to learn about how climate change might affect tornadoes.

One thing we know for certain is that we live in a warmer, wetter world thanks to climate change, and this is likely to have an effect on extreme weather events, including tornadoes. Unfortunately, in the case of one of nature’s most violent storms, we cannot yet predict what that effect might be.

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Related Resources

How and Why Do Violent Tornadoes Form?

Scientists hope new technology and computing power will help them understand destructive twisters

Carolyn Wilke, Knowable Magazine

One muggy day in July 1986, a news helicopter was recording footage of a festival in Minneapolis when the pilot and photographer glimpsed a tornado over nearby Brooklyn Park. They moved toward it, filming the powerful twister for 25 minutes, mesmerizing viewers watching it live on TV.

Watching as the helicopter hovered within maybe a half-mile of the twister was Robin Tanamachi, who was a kid growing up in Minneapolis at the time. “We were seeing all this really beautiful interior vortex structure,” she says. “I was just absolutely hooked on that, and I know I was not the only one.” Today, Tanamachi is a research meteorologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and one of many researchers delving into twisters’ mysteries, searching for details about their formation that may bolster future forecasts.

Tornadoes can be elusive research subjects. Through chasing storms and using computer simulations, scientists have worked out the basic ingredients needed to spin up a twister, but two crucial questions continue to vex them: Why do some thunderstorms form tornadoes while others don’t? And how exactly do tornadoes get their spin?

Despite the logistically and scientifically challenging nature of the work, scientists are motivated to keep trying: Tornadoes can kill dozens to hundreds of people in the United States every year and cause billions of dollars in damage. Now researchers are chasing the killer storms that spawn tornadoes with cutting-edge technology, flying drones into the storms and harnessing more computing power than ever to simulate them in search of answers.

“Today, we’re simulating the atmosphere with unprecedented spatial resolution. We’re observing storms with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution,” says atmospheric scientist Howie Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma in Norman. “But there’s still a lot of problems and a lot of things that need to be solved.”

Scientists may be turning up new clues to tornado formation by studying what’s happening in the atmosphere around them and on the ground below them, and by comparing what they find in the field with new, higher-resolution models of the thunderstorms that generate them. Even as they chase these new leads, researchers are also trying to understand how climate change may affect when and where tornadoes form.

Chasing answers

Since scientists began studying tornadoes in earnest in the mid-20th century, they’ve put together a pretty good outline of the steps required to generate a twister. Most destructive tornadoes are spawned by supercell thunderstorms—giants that typically have a very tall cloud that widens into an anvil shape at the top. Supercells are characterized by a mile-wide rotating updraft called a mesocyclone that can last for hours. That rotation comes from wind shear, which sets wind nearer to the ground spinning horizontally like a spiraling football. These winds then become vertically oriented within an updraft like a spinning top.

A couple of things need to happen for a supercell to become tornadic: First, the giant mesocyclone at the heart of the storm needs to get air rotating closer to the ground. Then this vortex needs to be stretched upward. Stretching tightens the twister’s footprint, speeding its rotation, similar to what happens when figure skaters pull in their arms during a spin.

The first clues to the physics of tornadoes came from secondhand information and damage reports as scientists tried to figure out what sorts of winds could blow down a barn or pluck a chicken, says Richard Rotunno, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and the author of an overview of the fluid dynamics of tornadoes in the 2013 Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics .

The construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s created a grid across the flat Great Plains that allowed enterprising scientists to get out in front of storms and sometimes directly observe tornadoes. A big advance came with the development of Doppler radar for meteorology. By emitting pulses of energy and detecting the reflected signal, the technology captures information about wind and precipitation. Radar allowed the detection of mesocyclones, which became the basis for tornado forecasts and a boon for chasers, who would stop at payphones periodically to call the lab for the latest radar intel.

But radar doesn’t catch all the clues scientists are after—such as the invisible forces in a storm that get winds moving—so they turned to models that simulate the physics of storms, says atmospheric scientist Paul Markowski at Penn State University in University Park. “In a computer simulation, we have all of those forces.”

The first three-dimensional simulations of supercells were created in the 1970s, helping scientists study the structures of updrafts and downdrafts and how precipitation evolves. As models improved over time, they revealed that updrafts can turn rotating areas of air into the massive mesocyclones in supercells. The models also showed how thunderstorms in the Northern Hemisphere can split into a left and a right cell, with the right one more likely to result in severe weather. These models were finally reproducing behavior observed in actual supercells and providing hints to how areas of cooler air, called cold pools, might play into tornado formation by shortening the time it takes for a twister to develop .

These models had relatively coarse resolution, but as computational power increased, simulations started to capture more detail about supercells, and researchers also worked to realistically capture the effects of rain, snow and hail. Still, the resolution was on the order of hundreds of feet—far too large to catch tornadoes, which tend to be closer to 65 feet wide.

Radar also got better and faster, and researchers started taking it into the field on trucks. In 1994, a host of scientists hoping to understand where tornadoes got their rotation began a multiyear campaign named Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, or VORTEX. They chased storms with all sorts of equipment, including sensor-loaded weather balloons and instrumented cars that took temperature, pressure and wind measurements within supercells. But the scientists felt they needed further observations, leading to VORTEX-2 in 2009. “The big takeaway that we got from VORTEX-2 was that you can’t really tell whether a storm is going to be tornadic or non-tornadic just by how it looks on radar or what the weather balloons in its proximity show you,” Tanamachi says.

Other field campaigns followed, but scientists still haven’t definitively answered why some supercell thunderstorms create tornadoes while others don’t progress beyond a mesocyclone. Now they are looking to new strategies and tools to fill in the rest of the story.

Send in the drones

Despite the drama of a churning twister, the center of a tornado probably isn’t where the answers lie. “Getting something into the tornado—it makes for good television, but it actually doesn’t tell us a whole lot,” Markowski says. “It tells us that it’s windy there and the pressure is low.”

Instead, scientists are using new tools to glean clues from the environment that could help them sift the tornadic supercells from the non-tornadic. “Detailed data on the structure of the atmosphere—its temperature, pressure, wind—below cloud base is largely absent,” Rotunno says. Researchers are starting to fly drones into storms to capture these observations.

Drones can take detailed measurements at higher altitudes than cars. And unlike weather balloons, they can cross boundaries between areas of a storm with different pressure or air density. “The reason we think they’re important is because tornadoes tend to form on these boundaries,” says atmospheric scientist Adam Houston of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Houston and his colleagues have been pairing drone observations with radar and other techniques in the field as part of the TORUS project since 2019. Now Houston’s team is digging through the data, looking for trends across storms for hints about whether these relatively small features influence tornado formation.

Scientists are also gathering information on what’s going on near the ground where the tornado forms. Both modeling and observations have shown that this is where the highest speeds occur . How air interacts with the land surface—features such as hills and forests—may play a role in starting and intensifying twisters, but radar tends to miss at least the first hundred feet just above the ground because of the geometry of the beam. Atmospheric scientist Jana Houser of Ohio State University in Columbus is hoping to learn more about what’s going on in that gap.

Houser’s team chases storms, capturing radar measurements of a tornado’s size and intensity over time. Then they search for links between that data and the topography and roughness of the surface the storm has swept over. They’ve found that, in most cases, changes in terrain affect the air getting sucked into the tornado and change the twister’s strength. This could be an important clue, but it’s proving difficult to puzzle out. “The problem,” Houser says, “is that sometimes the same type of occurrence in one case results in an intensification, and then in the next case, it results in a weakening.”

There may be a limit to how well researchers can understand and predict these storms, Markowski says. “When it comes tornadoes, I think we’re kind of butting up against chaos.” Perturbations that are so small they are essentially unmeasurable are everywhere in the atmosphere and may influence the formation of a tornado. Markowski and other scientists are starting to use machine learning to help better predict how these storms behave.

Finding the twist

Another big question has been swirling around twisters for decades: “We really don’t understand where the rotation that feeds the tornado ultimately comes from,” Houser says. The rotating air in a supercell’s mesocyclone is too high by the time it starts spinning vertically; the storms need additional rotation nearer to the ground to become tornadic. There are at least three hypotheses as to where this near-ground rotation comes from and, in any given twister, there may be multiple mechanisms at play, she says.

One hypothesis is based on how friction slows air moving near the ground. Air at higher altitudes moves faster and tumbles over the slower air and starts rolling like a barrel. The idea is that this rotating air could then be turned upright when it gets sucked into an updraft. Other hypotheses point to downdrafts related to precipitation and cooling air. The difference in density between cool air and neighboring warmer air can generate an air current that prompts spinning. Both observations and models have backed this idea and point to different areas of the storm where this may occur.

During either of these scenarios, there may also be many smaller pockets of swirling air that merge, combining into an area with enough rotation to get a tornado spinning. New support for this theory is emerging through higher-resolution storm simulations.

Most models working at coarser resolutions can’t actually see simulated tornadoes, inferring them instead based on areas of air with a lot of spin. Atmospheric scientist Leigh Orf of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has taken advantage of advances in supercomputing to build ten-meter-resolution models that can directly simulate tornadoes . At this scale, turbulence comes alive, Orf says. His models reveal how small areas of rotation could combine to kick off a tornado. “It fully resolves non-tornadic vortices that merge together in ways that are very compelling and I’ve never seen before,” he says.

Models can also provide hints of behavior to look for in the field. Orf’s models have helped him and his colleagues explore a feature they named the streamwise vorticity current , or SVC—a tail of swirling air off to the side of the storm that may amplify air rotation near the ground. Other scientists have now observed this feature in actual tornadic supercells.

Real-world observations don’t yet exist for the rotation mergers, but they may be coming. Plans to revamp the U.S. radar system would employ a new generation of faster radar that can capture features that develop in a flash. “I am very confident that the things I’m seeing in the simulations will eventually be detected in the atmosphere, just like the SVC was,” Orf says.

High stakes

The landscape of tornado research has expanded from the Great Plains into the southeastern United States, driven by deadly storms and increasing tornado activity there. When a rash of tornadoes hit the region in 2011 starting in mid-April, more than 300 people were killed. “It was the largest outbreak on record since the super outbreak of 1974 ,” Tanamachi says. That motivated another campaign in 2015, VORTEX-SE, to study tornadoes there, but the work has proved difficult.

Not only do atmospheric conditions in the Southeast differ from the Great Plains, but it’s also harder to observe twisters there, Tanamachi’s team found. The hilly landscapes block views of storms, mucking up storm-chasing efforts. Instead, researchers have to forecast where a tornado might form and hunker down there. The one time this approach yielded a tornado sighting during VORTEX-SE, the radar was blocked by a stand of trees.

Much of what scientists have learned about tornadoes elsewhere doesn’t apply to the Southeast, because many of the tornadoes that occur there are not seeded by supercells. Instead, they grow from a line of storms called a squall line. “We have no clue how these work,” says atmospheric scientist Johannes Dahl of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. While these tornadoes are typically weaker than those from supercells, they can still cause damage and death.

Despite the challenges, understanding tornadoes in the Southeast remains a priority, especially as tornado activity has kicked up in the region in the last four decades or so. It’s not clear yet if this is due to climate change or something else, such as the climate pattern known as El Niño, Dahl says. Still, researchers have started to see some trends related to climate. A look at 60 years of U.S. tornado data revealed that while the number of tornadoes didn’t change, the number of days on which multiple twisters occur has increased . Climate change appears to be aiding some of the ingredients for tornadoes at the expense of others. But it seems that on a good day for tornadoes, the conditions are very favorable, Houser says.

With increasingly powerful models, a possible upgrade to the U.S. radar system and the help of machine learning, researchers will continue in their quest to unveil the inner workings of tornadoes. “Although research in this area has been going on for decades,” Dahl says, “it always seems like there are surprises.”

Even after 20 years of studying tornadoes, Houser finds herself “giddy, excited” by the prospect of catching a tornado in action—ideally over a field where it isn’t destroying someone’s home. “There’s this weird dichotomy between the beauty that they have and the volatility and intensity and violence that they wreak,” Houser says. “They’re so mysterious.”

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What is a Tornado?

Tornadoes are usually recognizable by their funnel clouds. Typically, this dynamic, funnel-shaped cloud moves beneath the main storm system. Tornadoes have a condensation funnel made up of water droplets, dust, dirt, and debris that makes them visible almost all of the time. Tornadoes are known by a variety of names, including "whirlwind," "windstorm," "cyclone," "twister," and "typhoon," but they are the most dangerous atmospheric storm.

Formation of Tornadoes

During a supercell storm, the rotation is focused and lowered by downdraughts (descending currents of cold, dense air). In between the formation of tornadoes, rotation may become so concentrated that a narrow column of rapidly spinning air will form. When this violently revolving column of air reaches the ground, a tornado is formed. The presence of a condensation funnel- a funnel-shaped cloud that forms owing to the tornado vortex's much-lowered pressure- makes the tornado observable in the formation of tornadoes. The tornado's visibility may be aided by dust and other debris carried by the powerful winds.

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Cause of Tornado

When warm, moist air collides with cold, dry air, tornadoes emerge. Generally, thunderstorms form when cooler, denser air is pushed over warmer air which is the cause of tornadoes. Updrafts are caused by warm air rising through the cold air. Whenever the wind strength or direction changes, the updraft begins to rotate.

Effects of Tornado

Tornadoes in the United States do roughly $400 million of damage each year and kill about 70 people on average. Homes and businesses are torn apart by extremely violent winds. Winds may also rip the bark off trees, collapse bridges, topple trains, send automobiles and trucks flying, and suck all the water out of a riverbed.

Tornadoes and Severe Storms

Tornadoes are funnel-shaped rotating clouds that arise as a result of violent thunderstorms. They stretch from a thunderstorm to the ground with intense winds averaging 30 miles per hour. They can also accelerate from a standstill to 70 mph in a handful of seconds. Tornadoes in the United States are typically 500 feet across and move for five miles on the ground, with a thunderous roar akin to that of a freight train.

Tornadoes and violent storms pose a threat to the affected regions. Strong wind gusts, lightning strikes, and flash floods are all part of these catastrophic storms. Tornadoes can strike with little or no warning, leaving victims with only seconds to seek shelter. People frequently suffer distresses as a result of tornadoes and severe storms' unpredictability. There are several adverse effects associated with tornadoes and severe storms.

Where do Tornadoes Occur?

The Great Plains of central America are home to the majority of tornadoes, providing a perfect setting for severe thunderstorm formation. Storms form when dry cold air coming south from Canada collides with warm moist air moving north from the Gulf of Mexico in this area, known as Tornado Alley. Tornadoes can occur at any time of year, but they are most common during the spring and summer months when thunderstorms are present. Tornadoes are most common in May and June.

Did you Know?

A tornado is a swirling, funnel-shaped cloud with whirling winds that can reach 300 mph that stretches from a thunderstorm to the ground.

Tornado damage tracks can be more than one mile broad and 50 miles long.

Once on land, tropical storms and hurricanes can be accompanied by tornadoes.

FAQs on Tornado

1. Explain the general reason why tornadoes occur?

Wind shear is one of the most well-known factors in tornado generation. The variation in direction and speed of the wind with height is known as wind shear. Within a storm, this can result in a horizontal spinning effect. According to the cause of tornadoes, when the rotating air of an updraft collides with the rotating air of a downdraft, the result is this famous and frightening funnel cloud of a tornado. When moist, warm air meets cool, dry air, this mix of winds is common. When these air masses collide, they cause instability in the atmosphere, allowing wind to change direction, flow faster, and rise higher, resulting in the above-mentioned rotation.

2. What do you mean by Tornado speed?

Tornadoes have a very high damage potential due to strong wind speeds of up to 500 km/h in the outer area and a massive depression in the center. A tornado has a diameter of 50 to 1,000 m (average 100 m) with a wind speed of more than 105 km/h on the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF) (EF0, see Table 1). Only supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes of category EF3 or above, but weaker tornadoes can originate on the flanks of a squall line or during the impact of a hurricane. Because exact measurements are rarely available, the tornado speeds and hence the category are approximated from damage patterns on the ground. A mobile Doppler radar (DOW) in the United States recorded the fastest wind speed or tornado speed to date (480 km/h) (May 3, 1999, Oklahoma).

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Essays on Tornado

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Tornadoes: Exploring Their Nature and Impact

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Report on Oklahoma Tornado Disaster in 1999

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Cause And Effect Essay Guide

Cause And Effect Essay Examples

Best Cause and Effect Essay Examples To Get Inspiration + Simple Tips

What is a Cause and Effect Essay?

A cause and effect essay explores why things happen (causes) and what happens as a result (effects). This type of essay aims to uncover the connections between events, actions, or phenomena. It helps readers understand the reasons behind certain outcomes.

In a cause and effect essay, you typically:

Identify the Cause: Explain the event or action that initiates a chain of events. This is the "cause."
Discuss the Effect: Describe the consequences or outcomes resulting from the cause.
Analyze the Relationship: Clarify how the cause leads to the effect, showing the cause-and-effect link.

Cause and effect essays are common in various academic disciplines. For instance, studies in sciences, history, and the social sciences rely on essential cause and effect questions. For instance, "what are the effects of climate change?", or "what are the causes of poverty?"

Now that you know what a cause and effect is, let’s read some examples.

Cause and Effect Essay Examples for Students

Here is an example of a well-written cause and effect essay on social media. Let’s analyze it in parts to learn why it is good and how you can write an effective essay yourself.

The essay begins with a compelling hook that grabs the reader's attention. It presents a brief overview of the topic clearly and concisely. The introduction covers the issue and ends with a strong thesis statement , stating the essay's main argument – that excessive use of social media can negatively impact mental health.

The first body paragraph sets the stage by discussing the first cause - excessive social media use. It provides data and statistics to support the claim, which makes the argument more compelling. The analysis highlights the addictive nature of social media and its impact on users. This clear and evidence-based explanation prepares the reader for the cause-and-effect relationship to be discussed.

The second body paragraph effectively explores the effect of excessive social media use, which is increased anxiety and depression. It provides a clear cause-and-effect relationship, with studies backing the claims. The paragraph is well-structured and uses relatable examples, making the argument more persuasive.

The third body paragraph effectively introduces the second cause, which is social comparison and FOMO. It explains the concept clearly and provides relatable examples. It points out the relevance of this cause in the context of social media's impact on mental health, preparing the reader for the subsequent effect to be discussed.

The fourth body paragraph effectively explores the second effect of social comparison and FOMO, which is isolation and decreased self-esteem. It provides real-world consequences and uses relatable examples.

The conclusion effectively summarizes the key points discussed in the essay. It restates the thesis statement and offers practical solutions, demonstrating a well-rounded understanding of the topic. The analysis emphasizes the significance of the conclusion in leaving the reader with a call to action or reflection on the essay's central theme.

This essay follows this clear cause and effect essay structure to convey the message effectively:

Read our cause and effect essay outline blog to learn more about how to structure your cause and effect essay effectively.

Free Cause and Effect Essay Samples

The analysis of the essay above is a good start to understanding how the paragraphs in a cause and effect essay are structured. You can read and analyze more examples below to improve your understanding.

Cause and Effect Essay Elementary School

Cause and Effect Essay For College Students

Short Cause and Effect Essay Sample

Cause and Effect Essay Example for High School

Cause And Effect Essay IELTS

Bullying Cause and Effect Essay Example

Cause and Effect Essay Smoking

Cause and Effect Essay Topics

Wondering which topic to write your essay on? Here is a list of cause and effect essay topic ideas to help you out.

The Effects of Social Media on Real Social Networks
The Causes And Effects of Cyberbullying
The Causes And Effects of Global Warming
The Causes And Effects of WW2
The Causes And Effects of Racism
The Causes And Effects of Homelessness
The Causes and Effects of Parental Divorce on Children.
The Causes and Effects of Drug Addiction
The Impact of Technology on Education
The Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality

Need more topics? Check out our list of 150+ cause and effect essay topics to get more interesting ideas.

Tips For Writing a Good Cause and Effect Essay

Reading and following the examples above can help you write a good essay. However, you can make your essay even better by following these tips.

Choose a Clear and Manageable Topic: Select a topic that you can explore thoroughly within the essay's word limit. A narrowly defined topic will make it easier to establish cause-and-effect relationships.
Research and Gather Evidence: Gather relevant data, statistics, examples, and expert opinions to support your arguments. Strong evidence enhances the credibility of your essay.
Outline Your Essay: Create a structured outline that outlines the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. This will provide a clear roadmap for your essay and help you present causes and effects clearly and coherently.
Transitional Phrases: Use transitional words and phrases like "because," "due to," "as a result," "consequently," and "therefore" to connect causes and effects within your sentences and paragraphs.
Support Each Point: Dedicate a separate paragraph to each cause and effect. Provide in-depth explanations, examples, and evidence for each point.
Proofread and Edit: After completing the initial draft, carefully proofread your essay for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Additionally, review the content for clarity, coherence, and flow.
Peer Review: Seek feedback from a peer or someone familiar with the topic to gain an outside perspective. They can help identify any areas that need improvement.
Stay Focused: Avoid going off-topic or including irrelevant information. Stick to the causes and effects you've outlined in your thesis statement.
Revise as Needed: Don't hesitate to make revisions and improvements as needed. The process of revising and refining your essay is essential for producing a high-quality final product.

To Sum Up ,

Cause and effect essays are important for comprehending the intricate relationships that shape our world. With the help of the examples and tips above, you can confidently get started on your essay.

If you still need further help, you can hire a professional writer to help you out. At MyPerfectWords.com , we’ve got experienced and qualified essay writers who can help you write an excellent essay on any topic and for all academic levels.

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Tornado Essay Examples

Typhoon yolanda: the role of government and society.

In the Philippines, there is a word called Haling or 'to care for oneself.' In this country it means that they take care of themselves by taking time heal themselves, take care of yourself. They believe that if they do not heal themselves, they will...

The Role of Social Media in Typhoon Preparedness and Response

The Philippines has been name as the world’s most exposed country to tropical storms. An average of 20 storms per year hit the country, five of which are destructive. In 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda hits the central Philippine island, as it is the most destructive...

Tornadoes Unveiled: the Science and Impact of Nature's Fury

Take a moment to close your eyes and picture yourself in this situation. It is a late March afternoon. The skies are as dark as night and the wind has been gusting all day, but suddenly it has come to a halt. The sky has...

2019 Lee County Tornado and Its Effect on People

On March 3, 2019, Lee County, Alabama, southern United States suffered from the severe disasters of the tornado and the tornado disaster had resulted in 23 deaths and dozens missing until March 5 (Alijah, 2019). In the case of this natural disaster, a large number...

The Impact and Severity of the Joplin, Missouri Tornado of 2011

On May 22, 2011, in a small town in Missouri, an EF-5 tornado touched down and devastated the local area of Joplin. Its impacts are still being felt today. With over 160 fatalities and 1,000 injuries, it was the deadliest tornado ever recorded in the...

Overview of the Most Powerful Tornadoes in History

A tornado is one of the most mysterious and destructive natural phenomena. This is an atmospheric whirlwind that occurs in a thunderstorm. It looks like a funnel cloud moves at an incredible speed and is capable of causing catastrophic damage. Today, we'll talk about the...

Analysis of the Difference Between Tornado Watch and Warning

The difference between tornado watch and warning is a very important topic as it is a phenomenon that affects everyday people. Well, you can feel free to liken it to the disparity between taking precautionary measures and taking actions respectively. For those who may not...

Analysis of the Timeline of 2008 Iowa Tornado Outbreak

The Iowa tornado outbreak occurred during May 22-31, 2008, it was considered a set of different tornado outbreaks that affected the central plains of the United States. A total of 239 tornadoes were recorded during this time. We will focus on May 25th, 2008, what...

A Research Paper on Severe Tornadoes and Thunderstorms

Severe tornadoes and thunderstorms can be very dangerous. They can cause thousands of dollars in damage and even kill thousands of people. When there is a severe thunderstorm, it can create more violent and extreme weather, for example flash floods and lightning. Thunderstorms can also...

1999 Oklahoma Tornado – One of the Most Deadliest Disasters in the Us History

Natural hazard refers to catastrophic events or phenomenon of atmospheric, geological, and hydrological origins that can cause fatalities, property damage, social environmental disruption and can indirectly cause social grievances and resource scarcities (Jiuping Xu, 2016). These includes earth quake, tornadoes, Volcanic eruption, tsunamis, floods, typhoons...

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