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 There’s a reason The Wizard of Oz was set in Kansas. Kansas—as the people of Greensburg know all too well—is Ground Zero for tornadoes. It’s smack in the middle of “Tornado Alley,” an area spanning eight states where more than 75% of all tornadoes in the world take place.
In the central U.S., cool, dry air from the Arctic collides with warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico and warm, dry air from the southwest. Above the flat Great Plains, far from mountains and coastal weather that could interfere, thunderstorms can form undisturbed.
Tornado Formation
A tornado is a swirling, funnel-shaped column of wind stretching from a thunderstorm cloud down to the ground. It gets its start when strong winds at high altitudes set a thunderstorm’s updrafts rotating.
Because tornadoes get their start from thunderstorms, the central United States is a perfect thunderstorm factory. It has just what tornadoes need to get started: warm, humid air colliding with cool, dry air. These conditions spawn more than 600 tornadoes, on average, in the U.S. every year.
Tornado Truths
Tornadoes can’t cross rivers, right? Wrong. If you hide under a highway overpass, you’ll be safe, right? Wrong, again. Here’s another myth: that tornadoes never strike big cities. Tell that to Miami, where a tornado touched down in 1997. Tornadoes can strike anywhere, even urban areas—including Chicago, Nashville, Houston, St. Louis, and Washington, DC, to name a few.
Also, just because it twists doesn’t mean it’s a twister. Some other twisty weather events can happen that are not tornadoes.
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A dust devil is a spiraling column of wind that can rise from the ground in hot, dry areas, lifting up dust and debris.
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A waterspout is a vortex reaching from a thunderstorm cloud to the surface of a large body of water, drawing water up into the air.
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Continue to Rating Destruction. >>
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