This week in my Oklahoma town we had a tornado warning the other night. We’ve been in this state for over seven years and have yet to see one. I never saw one when I lived in Georgia either, even though we’d go outside when the tornado siren went off!
Tornadoes happen frequently in the south during this time of year. Check out a tornado compilation here:
The US has the most tornadoes than any other country each year.
How are tornadoes formed? From Popular Mechanics:
“Tornadoes are usually born from thunderstorms. High intensity tornadoes form from supercell thunderstorms, a storm that has a “deep rotating mesocyclone.” Supercell thunderstorms are usually when you’ll hear a tornado warning. A regular thunderstorm will hit before a supercell and for this to occur, a specific set of ‘ingredients’ need to come together.
Humid air, which rises, collides with cold air in the atmosphere above it. This creates wind shears, rolling columns of wind that spin above the space where the hot and cold air meet. The warmer air creates an updraft that takes one of the horizontal wind shears and moves it into a vertical position.
The peak of the updraft has two spinning columns on either side of it—the larger of the two columns overtakes the smaller one and becomes the thunderstorm. From here, the storm is able to expand due to the warm air being sucked into the spinning column.”
Read the whole Popular Mechanics article here.
Read more tornado formation/characteristics here or watch below:
Have you ever seen a tornado?
DCG
“The US has the most tornadoes than any other country each year.”
Why is that, I wonder.
And no, I’ve never seen a tornado, and hope I’ll never see or experience one!
I agree with you on that.
Why we get so many tornadoes, from a scientist at National Severe Storms Lab:
1. Winds out of the South bring warm, moist air from the Gulf at low levels over the eastern half of the United States.
2. Winds out of the West bring air over the Rocky Mountains and High Desert of the Southwest, making that air dry and cool aloft.
3. Because of the Earth’s rotation, the winds are almost always aloft coming out of the West.
Full story here: Why Are There So Many Tornadoes in the United States? – The Atlantic
Lived in Oklahoma all my life. Yes, I’ve seen them! The weather service here is second to none. They can tell you at street level where a possible tornado is. Cool western air, moist Gulf air, and dry desert air all coming together in one spot. 40 degree temperature drops in a hour. 60 mph wind gusts. Green clouds circling overhead ready to pound you with golf ball size hell. The doors on your house “pop”. Sirens actually saying, “TAKE COVER, NOW!!!” The best lightning show you’ll ever see. Oklahoma weather is awesome, you can feel the power!!! You’ll realize how small you really are. Tornados don’t care. I look forward to a good storm. I have a friend that is a storm chaser at OU. She loves it. Try a storm chasing ride-a-long.
DCG . . . Just be careful. I thought when Mount St Helens blew in 1980 — that was about as tramatic an event as I ever cared to go thru.
Yeah, I think it’d be amazing to see one in person yet I’d probably be scared to death!
Yes, I too, have lived most of my life in “tornado alley” as it used to be called. I recall standing on my porch many years ago and watched one in the east part of the city. That one caused major damage. They can truly be intimidating. Travis Myers our weather man for years keeps us warned. Just had a T warning last week and sirens going off. Being prepared is key.
Having lived in southern Illinois, I’ve seen tornadoes from a distance and also have seen the damage they did to our little town. Scary things!
There was a derecho that hit the Midwest, and went through the Chicago area last summer. I could see the dark clouds moving rapidly towards me as I drove and knew I was gonna get drenched. What I didn’t know until later that night, is that a tornado touched down a couple minutes later at the spot where I was driving. I guess when you see horizontal rain, you’re pretty much experiencing hurricane force winds. I didn’t see the tornado due to the rain. I did wind up with a flat tire after driving over debris, but I was fine.
If there’s cow pasture in the middle of developed areas, there’s probably a reason why no one wants to build on it… atmosphere and terrain don’t change.
Thank you DCG for this interesting and foreboding post. Praise God I have never seen a tornado, even though I live in the South where they form. I have seen tornadoes on television shows and they are absolutely incredibly frightening, especially when you see the devastation they cause.
I was born and raised in Iowa. I lived in Iowa for most of my first 26 years. I saw one tornado come out of a cloud back in 1983, but it never touched down. The tornado then went back up into the cloud.
I believe that the state of Iowa is sixth on the total tornado list. Iowa is probably on the northern edge of “Tornado Alley”. I think Oklahoma, north Texas and Arkansas get a lot of tornadoes. I remember I was hitchhiking through north Texas and we drove by the local high school in Aspermont, Texas. The school was built underground to protect it from tornadoes.
I remember I hitchhiked through Greensburg, Kansas a week or so after a tornado took out 90% of the town. I walked around town to look at the damage. That was in 2007.
Sometimes God’s timing is so perfect you are left in awe and wonder in the little details of our lives.
Years ago I was hitchhiking in Kansas. I left Phillipsburg, Kansas heading east on U.S. 36. I wasn’t getting any rides, so I kept walking. It was seventeen miles to Kensington, KS. I made it to Kensington at around 9 PM. I stopped at his convenience store and got something to eat. The guy at the store said that he needed to close for the night because there was a tornado warning for the area.
I looked across the road and spotted a junk yard. I walked to the junk yard and noticed this four-door pickup. I opened the back door, crawled inside with my backpack and within five minutes it rained cats and dogs. I never got wet.
The next morning, I began walking and hitchhiking and noticed the damage done by the tornado. Fence lines ruined, grain bins smashed and twisted. Some buildings damaged.
I wondered why I didn’t get a single ride all day after I left Phillipsburg. What if I had gotten a ride and got dropped off in the middle of the tornado’s path? That never happened. I didn’t get a ride so that I had to walk to a place where I could sleep out of the rain and out of the path of the tornado. Thank you, Lord.