Tornadoes are an extremely deadly natural phenomenon, and sometimes maintain higher wind speeds than hurricanes. The deadliest tornado ever recorded in the U.S. killed 695 people and injured 2,027 people, spanning across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Today we will be teaching you how tornadoes form, how to classify them, observing patterns about where they occur, and comparing them to hurricanes. Before we delve deeper into the concept of tornadoes, it is first essential to understand what a tornado actually is, paired with a working understandable definition. According to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, “a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from the base of a cumulonimbus cloud to the ground. Because wind is invisible, it is hard to see a tornado …show more content…
A tornado is formed in tandem with a towering thunderstorm, called a supercell, that reaches up to 50,000 feet tall and brings high force winds. Because of this, a tornado will also come with giant hailstones, flooding, and great flashes of lightning. The first ingredient for a tornado to develop is convecting air. Storms need condensation to form tornadoes, and when the clouds condense, heat is released. This exothermic reaction caused by condensation is what creates the energy that drives huge upward drafts of air. The more condensation, the bigger the storm clouds grow, which leads to more powerful updrafts. In supercells, this rising air mass is particularly strong. As air climbs, it can change direction and start to move more quickly. When the convecting air creates a cyclic self-enforcing motion, complete with an updraft, this updraft and cyclic motion result in the cyclone turning from an outward-facing position into a vertical one. In the Northern Hemisphere, tornadoes rotate counterclockwise; they rotate clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the Coriolis effect (though there are