Tornado Formation

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

What is tornado weather?

For a tornado to form, there must first be a thunderstorm known as a supercell.

A supercell thunderstorm has a powerful updraft, or winds moving upward, called a mesocyclone. Convection causes the warm air to float upward because it is less dense. As the warm air near the ground rises, cooler air from above sinks.

(To learn more about heat transfer, check out our lesson found under Additional Resources in the right-hand sidebar.)

This cycle causes the rotation of air that can become a tornado.

Watch the following time-lapse video of a supercell.

• Want to understand more about supercells?

Check out What is a Supercell?.

Tornado formation can be pretty confusing! For a good review, watch the video below.

Although tornadoes can occur almost anywhere, most tornadoes occur in the Midwest in a section called Tornado Alley.

The cool air from the mountains and the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico make tornadoes especially common in this area.

This next video explains why the United States has so many tornadoes.

In the 1996 movie Twister, Bill is called a human barometer because of his ability to sense tornadoes.

Watch this clip from the movie where Bill looks at the sky and tests the wind. He knows a tornado is coming and tells his storm-chasing friend, "It's goin' green."

Does the sky turn green before a tornado?

Yes and no. A green sky doesn't necessarily mean a tornado is coming, but it is associated with large thunderstorms, hail, and rain.

Sunlight, which is white light made of all colors, is scattered when it hits our atmosphere and the thunderstorm. This removes the red and blue wavelengths and leaves the green light, causing the air to take on a green tint.

Watch the video below for a more detailed explanation.

Do tornadoes have families?

In another clip from the movie Twister, the storm chasers find a family of tornadoes, which is several tornadoes.

Tornado families develop from the same supercell thunderstorm.

It is common to mistake the damage caused by tornado families as damage caused by a single tornado because the paths of the tornadoes often overlap.

What noise do tornadoes make?

In March of 2012, not one but two tornadoes hit the high school in Henryville, Kentucky. Watch and listen as one of the tornadoes destroys the school gymnasium.

• But what does the noise sound like when you are actually there?

Survivors who have been through a tornado describe it as getting very quiet at first before sounding incredibly loud, similar to a loud freight train when the tornado passed over them.

Read 22 People Survive Okla. Tornado by Hiding in Bank Vault for a first-hand account of what it is like to hide from a tornado.

• Sounds terrifying.

Hollywood had to recreate that sickening sound of a tornado for the movie Twister?

• How did they do it?

They used a camel, of course. If that is hard to believe, listen to this crazy camel.

The camel is clearly saying, "Hurry over to the Got It? section to see how much you have learned about tornadoes!"