subject: What Causes Natural Disasters? Part Three of Four [print this page] Have you ever experienced the horrifying effects of an earthquake, a volcano, tornadoes, or a hurricane? Depending on where you live, it could be a common thing. You may have suffered the losses of a broken family, a tortured home, and a wiped out population. You may have experienced the heart of a storm, getting hit with flying bar stools, getting swept under water, sitting in basements hoping for the best. This is not fun day off of school, it's a disaster. One way that weather specialists keep track of dangerous natural disasters is by understanding why they form.
Here are some of the main causes of tornadoes and other random facts about this natural disaster. What a tornado is is a violently rotating column of air which descends from a thunderstorm to the ground Every single U.S. state has experienced a twister before, Texas holds the record with an annual average of 12 tornadoes For the most part, tornadoes are exclusive to the United States. However, they have been reported in Great Britain, India, Argentina, and a few other countries worldwide Tornadoes will form when warm, humid air collides with cold, dryer air Large thunderstorms in which winds are already in rotation are called supercells and they are the most violent tornadoes of all In the U.S., most tornadoes will occur in what is known as Tornado Alley, that is a swath of stretches from Texas to Nebraska, it also includes the states of Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas In the states along the Gulf of Mexico, Tornado season begins in the early spring. As it swings further north, following the jet stream, the tornado activity becomes more prevalent in the summer and early fall Tornadoes are usually accompanied with or preceded with severe thunderstorms as well as high winds and/or hail The average twister is about 660 feet which is 200 meters in width and it moves at a rate about 30 miles per hour, that is 50 kilometers a mile To track a storm and find one forming at its early stages Meteorologists at the U.S. National Weather Service use equipment such as Doppler radars, satellites, weather balloons, and computer modeling to watch the skis.
