Weather

A tornado is defined as a violently rotating column extending from a thunderstorm to the ground. The most violent tornadoes are capable of tremendous destruction with wind speeds of two hundred and fifty miles per hour or more. Damage paths can be more than one mile wide and fifty miles long. In an average year, eight hundred tornadoes are reported nationwide, resulting in eighty deaths and over one thousand five hundred injuries. In the body of my essay, I will tell you about types of tornadoes, where tornadoes come from, where and when tornadoes occur, the damage they inflict, variations of tornadoes, and how to detect tornadoes.

There are many types of tornadoes. The average tornado is usually split up into categories based on the strength of the tornado. Most tornadoes, about sixty nine percent 69%, are considered weak, which means they usually last between one minute and ten minutes, have winds less than one hundred and ten miles per hour, and the percent of deaths that occur during these is less than five percent. Strong tornadoes, about twenty nine percent 29%, may last about twenty minutes, have winds between one hundred and ten and two hundred and five miles per hour, and the percent of deaths that are found are about thirty percent of all tornado deaths. The last category for tornadoes is violent ones. With these comes winds greater than two hundred and five miles per hour, they can last about an hour, and have seventy percent of all deaths from tornadoes. Another type of tornado is known as a waterspout. This is a weak tornado that forms over warm water. They are most common along the Gulf Coast and southeastern states. In the western United States, they occur with cold late fall or late winter storms, during a time when you least expect it to develop. They occasionally move inland becoming tornadoes that can cause a great deal of damage and many injuries.

Most tornadoes evolve from energy. Tornadoes come from the energy released in a thunderstorm. As powerful as they are, tornadoes account for only a tiny fraction of the energy in a thunderstorm. What makes them dangerous is that their energy is concentrated in a small area, perhaps only a hundred yards across. Not all tornadoes are the same, of course, and science does not yet completely understand how part of a thunderstorm's energy sometimes gets focused into something as small as a tornado.

Whenever and wherever conditions are right, tornadoes are possible, but they are most common in the central plains of North America, east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Appalachian Mountains. Tornadoes can also occur in many other areas of the world as well. They have been recorded in Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America as well as in North America. They occur mostly during the spring and summer; however, the tornado season comes early in the south and later in the north because spring comes later in the year as one moves northward. They usually occur during the late afternoon and early evening. However, they have been know to occur in every state in the United States, on any day of the year, and at any hour.

The damage from tornadoes comes from the strong winds they contain. It is generally believed that tornado wind speeds can be as high as three hundred miles per hour in most violent tornadoes. Wind speeds that high can cause automobiles to become airborne, rip ordinary homes to shreds, and turn broken glass and other debris into lethal missiles. The biggest threat to living creatures, including humans, from tornadoes is from flying debris and from being tossed about in the wind. It used to be believed that the low pressure in a tornado contributed to the damage by making buildings "explode" but this is no longer believed to be true.

Some variations of tornadoes are that they can be found in the early stages of rapidly developing thunderstorms.