Tornadoes
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Danny Xu
7/17/20252 min read
What are Tornadoes?
Tornadoes are one of the most powerful and destructive natural disasters on Earth. Tornadoes are born from thunderstorms and are rotating columns of air that go from the clouds of the thunderstorm to the ground. Once a tornado hits the ground, it is able to traverse across the land it is on and destroy anything in its path. Tornadoes are shaped like funnels and are commonly associated with dark clouds and lightning surrounding it.
The places in the world that have the most tornadoes consist of the US, England, Canada, Australia and Japan. Usually, tornadoes have an easier time forming in open fields without tall infrastructure or mountains but that does not mean tornadoes can’t form in places like cities, it is just more rare because there are more buildings blocking the air from colliding and becoming a tornado.
How do Tornadoes Form?
As said in the introduction, tornadoes are born from thunderstorms but more specifically, from supercells. A supercell is the most dangerous kind of thunderstorm because it has rotating air that can spawn tornadoes. However, most thunderstorms do not become supercells and not all supercells will spawn a tornado. Also warm wet air close to the ground has to rise and come into contact with cool dry air in the sky. When the air is contacting in opposite directions, this creates the common spinning motion in tornadoes and a cloud is able to pull that spinning air into the sky and as it spins faster and faster, it attracts more air, fueling the tornado with more power.
What are Signs of a Tornado Coming?
Commonly, intense rain or even hail can come out of nowhere when a tornado is approaching. Since tornado clouds come from supercells that are high up in the sky, ice is able to form from Earth’s cold atmosphere. Tornadoes also have a super dark area around them because they pull up a lot of debris from the ground and surround themselves with that debris. The storm clouds that tornadoes come from are always huge which blocks any existing sunlight which can explain why the sky can go from bright to a sudden darkness. When a tornado is approaching, they sometimes also give a screeching or roar sound in the distance coming from the air’s rotation.