A Free Essay about Tornadoes
Uploaded by andreawatkins01 on Oct 25, 2012
Tornadoes
There are at least 1000 tornadoes reported each year in the United States. In this paper I will discuss how tornadoes develop, when and where tornadoes are most likely to occur, the different levels of tornadoes and how they are measured, and some tornado safety tips.
Usually tornadoes will form from thunderstorms. For a thunderstorm to spawn a tornado the storm must contain rotation. For this rotation to develop within a thunderstorm there must be warm, moist air and cool, dry air that meet which form the rotation. From this rotation a cone-shaped column of air coming from the thunderstorm is formed, which is known as a funnel cloud. But, when the funnel cloud touches the ground it becomes a tornado.
Tornadoes are very unpredictable and could happen at any time of the day or anytime of year. For southern states, like us, tornado season is not only at its peak from March to May, but also in the fall. For the nothern states tornadoes usually occur during the summer. However, in the north and south of the United States the most likely time for a tornado to happen is between three o'clock and nine o'clock p.m.
More than half of the nation's tornadoes occur in the central part of the United States, this area is known as the Great Plains. The Great Plains is made up of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and South and North Dakota. This area of the United States is also known as Tornado Alley. This area of flat land combines all of the elements needed to form tornadoes.
The Fujita Tornado Intesity Scale was developed to measure the strength of a tornado by the damage it made. The Fujita Scale, also known as the F-Scale, was invented in 1971 by Ted Fujita. The National Weather Service uses the Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale to measure tornado intensity. The only problem with this scale is that the tornado can't be measured until after it has occurred. The F-Scale starts out with an EF0 being the weakest and goes all the way up to an EF6. The EF0 has winds between 65 and 85 mph, and would only leave minor damage such as leaving trees with broken branches. The most damaging tornado on the F-Scale is the EF6. This strength tornado has winds...