Skimmers' Nook
Facts About Tornadoes
- The word Tornado has originated
from the Spanish word 'tronada'. The word 'tronada' itself has its
origins in the latin word 'tonare', which literally means to
thunder.
- The Tornado is a air column that
rotates rapidly, while connecting with a cloud base and the earth's
surface. There are several forms that a tornado may assume, but the
most typical and infamous is the funnel type shape, with the narrow
end touching the earth.
- The lower portion of the funnel is
invariably a cloud of debris that has been picked up by the
tornado's suction power.
- Another typical behavior seen in
twisters and cyclones is their travel from southwest to northeast.
However, this is not the case always. Some can also move in the
opposite direction and even turn back if hit by winds from the
thunderstorm's core.
- The funnel clouds last for less
than ten minutes, also most of them last for a few seconds. However,
cyclones are known to last for over an hour, in the early nineteenth
century.
- Tornadoes can have a pretty speed
associated with them. A normal tornado can achieve speeds as high as
120 mph and can measure up ton 250 feet across. The more destructive
tornadoes have windspeeds as high as three hundred meters per hour.
They can measure more than a mile across and be on the ground for
ten miles or more.
- Tornadoes can occur almost
anywhere in the world – any continent on the globe, except
Antarctica. The highest occurrence of the tornadoes is in America,
New Zealand and the western and southeastern Australia, northwestern
and central Europe, Italy, east central South America, south central
and eastern Asia and Southern Africa.
- Tornadoes cannot be seen by the
naked eye. Tornadoes travel over the surface of the earth, and quite
a few times there is no physical manifestation of the tornado, only
a trail of destruction left behind by the tornado.
