how are tornadoes formed?

Answer 1

How are tornadoes formed?

In order to form a tornado you need three things: 1) a big thunderstorm 2) winds blowing from opposite directions and 3)strong up drafts. The updrafts combine with the thunder storm causing the top of cloud to bubble. The blowing winds then cause the storm to start spinning.



Tornado Alley. Tornado alley in the U.S. is where 90% of all the worlds tornadoes occur. It includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and Indiana, also known as the Great plains. Though tornadoes can strike anywhere at any time.



The Fujita Scale.

The Fujita scale was developed to classify the intensity of a tornado, by the damage left behind and the wind speed. The size of the tornado is not related to the intensity of the tornado. Tornados range in width from 150ft to more then a mile wide. Tornados can last a few minutes or more then an hour. They can travel a few hundred feet on the ground or more then 100 miles. Tornados are measured on the Fujita-persona scale they range from an F0 to F6. The scale takes into account the wind speed, path length, and path width.

Tornadoes are formed when a thunderstorm cloud develops very fast rotating winds, which reach to the ground. Tornadoes can be up to a mile wide, can destroy things to make wide paths several miles long. Tornadoes can disappear and then reappear a couple to several times. The average wind speed is at about 100 miles per hour. (Which is very fast). Even the strongest, rarest, and largest tornadoes can have winds at about 250 miles per hour at their maximum speed. Tornadoes are very dangerous and shouldn't be taken lightly

Answer 2

Good question. What you are basically asking and which has not been answered is the meteorological conditions under which these storms may form. As an Air Force meteorologist for many years I use to watch the forecasters who specialized in this kind of forecasting in Omaha, Nebraska as they worked. What they looked for was a region where warm, moist, unstable surface air coming from the south was overlain with drier, stronger, westerly air. The other thing they looked for would be the possibility of thunderstorm development or movement of these storms into that same region. Where these two met and the wind shear from near the surface to cloud level was such that the thunderstorms would experience a cyclonic circulation there that would help to trigger the tornado vortex.

Answer 3

tornadoes are formed when a thunderstorm cloud makes very fast rotating winds, which reach to the ground. Tornadoes can be up to a mile wide, can destroy things to make wide paths several miles long. Tornadoes can disappear and then reappear a couple to several times. The average wind speed is at about 100 miles per hour. even the strongest,rarest, and largest tornadoes can have winds at about 250 miles per hour at their maximum speed. tornadoes are very dangerous and shouldn't be taken lightly

Answer 4

Here's a simple analogy:

Imagine you have a lump of cookie dough inbetween your two hands. You rotate your hands like you're rolling dough, with a little twist upward. The twisting motion turns the lump into a string, actually, an upward spiral.

Now imagine one hand is warm moist air and the other cold air. As they meet side by side the warmer air rises against the colder air, like an upward spiral. The twisting motion upward accelerates. Any fluid including air will drop in pressure when it speeds up, so the pressure drops and it sucks in more air around it as it rises. It's a spiral that increases in speed and intensity. Like a figure skater that spins faster and faster as she pulls her arms in. The result, a giant low pressure vortex in the air that spins very fast and gets moved along by the storm it is usually attached to. The storm is the weather created by the warm moist air meeting the cold air, and then the conditions of rising and spinning take off from there.

Answer 5

Simply put, it's cold air and hot air that mingle and is pushed upwards or something like that. Mind you, it's not the tornado you see, but the dust or debris it carries.

Answer 6

Warm and cold air masses joining in the atmosphier