Tornado: Earth’s Devastating Phenomenon

Introduction

Tornado is one of earth’s most disastrous natural disasters that have taken countless lives. In designated places around the world tornadoes are formed which tear apart homes, towns and cities to shreds. The following with explain how tornadoes are caused, their effects, and how we can forecast them.

Formation of the Tornado

“Tornadoes are described as funnels of rapidly revolving gases.” Their winds can reach 250 miles an hour and can decimate a path a mile wide and 50 miles long. Also referred to as twisters, tornadoes are created during thunderstorms and often bring along hail. Giant, powerful thunderstorms named supercells, cause the most catastrophic tornadoes. Tornadoes are created when warmer, heavier air mixes with cold, parched air. The denser cold air is moved over the warm air, creating thunderstorms. The hotter gases ascends into the colder gases, resulting in an updraft. “This updraft will start to rotate if winds vary sharply in speed or direction.’’ As this revolving updraft takes in much more hotter gasses from the current thunderstorm, the tornadoes rotation rate increases. “Cool air provided by the jet stream, a strong band of wind in the atmosphere, provides even more energy.” The revolving wind continues to increase in size and eventually it drops down from the cloud. When it makes it to the ground, it forms a tornado.

The Destructive Characteristics of a Tornado

Tornadoes have unique characteristics that make them immensely destructive. Once a tornadoes is formed it can take up 3 hours long or as little as a few seconds. A tornado on average is about 660 feet wide and moves at about 30 miles per hour. Twisters are also most likely accompanied by severe thunderstorms and high winds as well as sometimes hail. The Fujita scale by F0 to F5 is a way to calculate a tornadoes intensely by analyzing the destruction caused by the tornado and calculating its wind speeds. Annually in the America there are around 400 million dollars in repair costs and on average around 70 fatalities. These detrimental twitters obliterate residential buildings, commercial buildings, ruin bridges, dilapidate trains, make vehicles fly, rip off the bark from trees, and absorb the riverbed’s water. People die from tornadoes by rolling them along the ground roughly or falling from high heights. Also people die or get injured from being hit by derby like roofing shingles, broken glass, doors, and metal rods.

The amount of deaths per year in the US has significantly decreased from the improved forecasting and warning systems that have been created. Meteorologists has discover several ways to detect and predict these destructive natural disasters. “Meteorologists use Doppler radar, satellites, weather balloons, and computer modelling to observe the weather for extreme storms and tornado activity.” Doppler radars analyze wind rates and identify zones of revolving inside of thunderstorms. From the utilization of Doppler radars, we can now predict tornadoes 13 minutes before they happen on average. “Some scientists, meteorology buffs, and adrenaline junkies hit the road throughout tornado season to attempting chase storms and observe them.” Researchers speed to position sensors on the tornadoes' path and direction. These sensors are used to record data like wind rate, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature. “It's often portended by a dark, greenish sky when Black storm clouds gather.” During these tornadoes baseball-size hail may fall. These tornadoes are prominent during the months of March and May.

Conclusion

As we further research and gain further knowledge about tornadoes, we will be able to predict tornadoes hours ahead of their coming to reduce the amount of deaths annually significantly. Also understanding how they work and their characteristics can allows us to build buildings strong enough to withstand theses tornadoes at their full force to limit the damage they do on residential and commercial building and reduce the damage costs annually. Tornadoes are fascinating natural disaster, but detrimental to human life.  

Works Cited

1. Doswell III, C. A., & Burgess, D. W. (1988). On Some Issues of United States Tornado Climatology. Monthly Weather Review, 116(3), 495–501.
2. Brooks, H. E., & Doswell III, C. A. (2002). Deaths in the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado from a Historical Perspective. Weather and Forecasting, 17(2), 354–361.
3. Fujita, T. T. (1981). Tornadoes and Downbursts in the Context of Generalized Planetary Scales. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 38(8), 1511–1534.
4. National Severe Storms Laboratory. (n.d.). Tornado Climatology. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [Website: https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/climatology/]