Tornadoes!

Tornadoes are one of the most violent kinds of storms. They occur in most places of the world in one form or another with varying degrees of severity. The USA gets them most frequent. But why do certain areas get them more frequently than others? 

Well tornadoes occur when two masses of different temperature and humidity meet. This causes a thunderstorm. The warm moist air will shoot up and create what’s called an updraft, while the cool dry air falls down creating a down draft. Normally the down draft created in this process will be separate of the down draft created from rainfall. The rain creates its own down draft because it is cooler then the warm air rising. The two down drafts eventually negatively affect the updrafts and the storm dies out. 

What makes a tornado different then a thunder storm, and essentially more dangerous, is that the down drafts become so powerful they wedge the updraft and make it rise faster and more intense. It can become so intense the updraft shoots into the stratosphere.  They will start to feed off of each other, and instead of dying out in 30-40 minutes as most thunderstorms do, it will take on a life of its own and last for hours.

As the updraft rises it will meet varying wind currents traveling at different directions called wind shears. If the wind shears are placed in the right spots and are fast enough it will spin the updraft like a top. That is when you can actually see the storm rotating. This creates a wall cloud, and the start of a tornado. 

“Tornado Season” is normally during the spring time when the climate is rapidly changing. Tornadoes occur less frequent in the winter time. A tornado can happen anywhere, in fact since 1950 a tornado had been recorded in all of the continental states in the US at least once. With central America and the east coast being the most common. This is because cool dry air will travel south from Canada and meet the very warm hot air traveling north from the Gulf of Mexico. The east coast too has the cool air from Canada mixing with the warm humid coastal air. 

The NCDC figures for 1950-2006 show that Pennsylvania reported 697 tornadoes with the only recorded F5 tornado in the region in 1985. Massachusetts reported 153 with an F4 in 1953 that killed 90 people, and New Jersey reported 144. Compared  to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma whose reported tornadoes are well over 6,000 combined it’s no wonder you rarely hear anything about them. Tornadoes happen much less in these states because the weather conditions are only optimal for a tornado much less frequently. On the east coast the weather is warm and humid most of the time. When the cool air from Canada travels south it makes a much less of an impact as it does to the states in Tornado Ally.