89 Fun Facts About Tornado

In the 1996 film Twister, which farm animal sails past the storm chasers' truck in mid-air?

A cow tumbles past the windscreen; like the tornadoes around it, the animal never existed outside the computers of the effects house Industrial Light & Magic.

At what time of day are tornadoes most likely to strike in the United States?

Late afternoon is the peak, with most tornadoes striking between about 4 and 9 p.m.: by then a day of sunshine has heated the ground and given thunderstorms their fuel.

Which U.S. state experiences the highest average number of tornadoes per year?

Texas tops the count mainly because it is so big: measured per square mile it sits well down the list, behind states such as Florida and Kansas.

In 1987 a violent F4 tornado crossed the Continental Divide and tore on into which US national park?

Yellowstone's 1987 tornado is a standard rebuttal to the belief that mountains stop twisters: rated a violent F4, it climbed right over the Continental Divide.

Which 1925 tornado is credited with the longest track on record, more than 200 miles across the Midwest?

The Tri-State Tornado raced across Missouri, Illinois and Indiana at about 60 mph on 18 March 1925, killing 695 people; some researchers suspect its record path was really a series of tornadoes.

What is the name of the US network of trained volunteer storm spotters who report tornadoes to forecasters?

Skywarn volunteers still matter in the radar age because the beam passes above the ground and cannot see every tornado, so forecasters rely on trained eyes to confirm what is happening below.

Where is safest in a tornado if your house has no basement?

A small interior room on the lowest floor, such as a bathroom or closet, puts as many walls as possible between you and the storm, which is the whole point of the advice.

With no building to shelter in, where do safety agencies say to lie flat as a tornado nears?

In a ditch or low ground, face down with your arms over your head, is the last resort; forecasters say to keep away from trees and cars, which the wind can throw on top of you.

What type of cloud typically produces tornadoes?

Cumulonimbus clouds are the towering thunderheads that breed tornadoes; they climb until the air stops rising near the tropopause, so the top spreads sideways into the familiar flat anvil.

What is a tornado called when it forms over a lake or the sea?

A waterspout comes in two kinds: the tornadic sort drops from a thunderstorm like any twister, but the far commoner fair-weather spout starts at the surface and builds upward.

What do forecasters call the Plains boundary where desert air from the west meets moist Gulf air?

A dry line brings a sharp drop in humidity as it passes; it pushes east across the Plains by day, often setting off the storms that spawn tornadoes, then drifts back west in the evening.

Which atmospheric ingredient gives a thunderstorm the rotation it needs to spawn a tornado?

Wind shear, a change in wind speed or direction with height, sets a horizontal tube of air rolling; rising air inside the storm then tilts that roll upright.

What part of a supercell thunderstorm is a tornado most likely to descend from?

The wall cloud is an abrupt lowering of the storm's rain-free base; spotters watch it for persistent rotation, which often shows up there minutes before a tornado forms.

The deadliest tornado on record killed about 1,300 people in 1989 in which country?

Bangladesh's Daulatpur-Saturia tornado of 26 April 1989 killed about 1,300 people; crowded villages, flimsy housing and little knowledge of tornado safety make its twisters the deadliest anywhere.

Approximately how many tornadoes occur in the United States in an average year?

About 1,200 is the modern average, but the true figure is unknown: better radar, more spotters and phone cameras now catch weak twisters that once went unrecorded.

What do storm chasers call the rain-wrapped area of a supercell where a hidden tornado may lurk?

The bear's cage is chaser slang: the 'bear' is the tornado and the 'cage' is the curtain of heavy rain wrapped around it, so it can only be seen from dangerously close range.

What colour do tornadoes often turn after crossing Oklahoma's clay-rich soil?

Reddish-brown funnels are common over Oklahoma because a tornado has no colour of its own: it takes on the hue of the dust and soil it pulls in, and there the dirt is red.

What is the term for a weak, short-lived whirlwind that spins up along the leading edge of a thunderstorm's outflow?

A gustnado is not a true tornado: it is an eddy in a storm's outflow with no link to any rotation in the cloud above, though its spinning dust is often reported as one.

The top tornado rating, EF5, begins at estimated winds above what speed?

200 mph is the EF5 threshold; the original 1971 scale set its top category at 261 mph, but engineers later found the same wreckage needs far slower winds, so the bar came down in 2007.

Which U.S. government agency is responsible for issuing tornado watches?

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma issues every tornado watch for the lower 48 states, while the more urgent tornado warnings come from local forecast offices.

What term describes the rare Northern Hemisphere tornadoes that spin clockwise instead of counterclockwise?

Anticyclonic tornadoes spin clockwise, the reverse of nearly every other twister north of the equator; in the Southern Hemisphere the rule flips and clockwise is the normal direction.

In the 2013 TV movie Sharknado, a freak storm rains man-eating sharks on which flooded American city?

Los Angeles is swamped by a storm that lifts sharks out of the ocean and drops them in the streets; reviewers hailed the result as 'so bad it's good', and sequels followed.

What percentage of all tornadoes are classified as violent (EF4 or EF5)?

About 1% of tornadoes reach EF4 or EF5; the true share may be a little higher, because ratings rest on damage and a violent twister that crosses only open country is rated low.

What kind of tornado is a landspout?

A landspout is one that forms without a mesocyclone: its spin starts at the ground and is stretched upward by a growing cloud, which is why most are weak and short-lived.

Most tornadoes stay on the ground for roughly how long?

A few minutes is typical: the average is about five, and many of the hours-long tornadoes in old records are now thought to have been several twisters in a row.

Which actor plays swaggering storm-chasing influencer Tyler Owens in the 2024 film Twisters?

Glen Powell plays the cocky YouTube chaser whose crew, written off as glory hounds, turns out to spend much of what it earns on food and aid for tornado victims.

What is a spinning cone of cloud hanging beneath a thunderstorm called before it reaches the ground?

A funnel cloud becomes a tornado only on touching down, but the name can mislead: a tornado's winds can already be at the ground before the visible funnel reaches it.

Which supercell feature wraps around the mesocyclone and helps tighten low-level rotation into a tornado?

The rear flank downdraft sinks at the back of the storm and curls around its rotation; spotters know it by the 'clear slot' of brighter sky it cuts into the cloud base.

Which US city was struck by devastating tornadoes in 1999, 2003 and 2013?

Moore, Oklahoma took an F5 in 1999, an F4 in 2003 and an EF5 in 2013; the last killed seven children when a wall collapsed at Plaza Towers Elementary School.

Community tornado sirens are designed mainly to alert people who are where?

Outdoors is the whole design brief: sirens are not built to be heard inside a house, and no national rule requires them, so each town decides whether to have any at all.

Which service broadcasts National Weather Service alerts continuously from its own network of transmitters?

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards carries National Weather Service broadcasts around the clock from more than 1,000 transmitters; receivers with SAME alerting sound an alarm when a tornado warning is issued.

What is a tornado outbreak?

Multiple tornadoes from the same storm system make an outbreak; the largest, in April 2011, spawned more than 360 in four days and helped make that the busiest tornado month on record.

What is the typical width of most tornadoes?

About 250 feet is a common figure for the typical tornado, and some estimates run to a few hundred yards; either way it is far smaller than the mile-wide monsters that make the news.

Which state suffered about three-quarters of the tornado deaths in the April 2011 Super Outbreak?

Alabama was hit twice on 27 April: a dawn line of storms spawned the first tornadoes, then afternoon supercells sent 62 in all across the state, killing 238 of the outbreak's 324 victims.

What truck-mounted radar system lets researchers measure tornado wind speeds up close?

The fleet grew out of the University of Oklahoma's meteorology school and is led by atmospheric scientists Joshua Wurman and Karen Kosiba.

What was the widest tornado ever recorded in the United States?

The 2013 El Reno tornado swelled to 2.6 miles across, the widest ever measured, and three veteran storm chasers died when it overtook their car.

What term describes a thin, twisting funnel most often seen as a twister dies out?

A rope shape usually marks a tornado's dying stage, when the funnel is stretched thin and bent by the storm's winds; thin does not mean tame, though, and some still do violent EF4 damage.

What is the nickname for a twister that looks wider than the distance from the cloud base to the ground?

A wedge can be more than a mile across, but width is no guide to strength: some huge tornadoes have done only weak damage, while far narrower ones have done the worst.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory puts a typical tornado's forward speed at roughly what?

10-20 mph is the laboratory's figure for a typical tornado's travel across the ground, a crawl beside the winds spinning inside it, which can be ten times as fast.

In August 1999 a rare tornado tore through the downtown of which western US state capital?

Salt Lake City's tornado ripped part of the roof off the Utah Jazz's arena and shredded the tents of a trade show, killing one man in a state where tornadoes are rare.

What is a multiple-vortex tornado?

Several sub-vortices spinning inside one funnel can add over 100 mph to the wind, which is why narrow arcs of extreme destruction can lie right beside light damage in a tornado's path.

For decades the US Weather Bureau barred forecasters from using the word 'tornado', fearing it would cause what?

Panic was the fear: from the late 1880s the government's forecasters kept the word 'tornado' out of their forecasts, and with the subject off limits, work on forecasting them stalled for decades.

Which is the top tier of the five risk categories used in US severe-weather outlooks?

High tops a ladder that runs Marginal, Slight, Enhanced, Moderate, High, so a 'Moderate' risk, despite its mild name, is the second most serious forecast there is.

What is a FEMA safe room?

A hardened structure built to withstand extreme winds, a FEMA safe room is rated the best protection there is: official advice ranks even a basement only next best.

What is the underground shelter dug beside many Plains farmhouses to escape tornadoes called?

A storm cellar is also known as a cyclone cellar, a name left over from the days when people on the Plains called tornadoes cyclones.

Which pouch-like clouds hanging beneath a thunderstorm's anvil look ominous but produce no severe weather themselves?

Mammatus pouches often hang beneath severe thunderstorms, and they are clouds in reverse: where most clouds billow upward on rising air, these bulge down as air sinks from the anvil.

What is a long-lived, widespread straight-line windstorm often mistaken for tornado damage called?

A derecho takes its name from the Spanish for 'straight': an Iowa physics professor chose the word in 1888 to set these straight-line winds apart from the rotating winds of a tornado.

What do spotters call the ragged, low cloud scraps under a storm that are often mistaken for tornadoes?

Scud looks menacing but is harmless: the loose fragments simply drift on the storm's cool outflow, and the test spotters apply is whether the cloud is actually rotating.

The fourth-deadliest US tornado killed more than 200 people in 1936 in which Mississippi city?

Tupelo's tornado killed at least 216 people; among the survivors were one-year-old Elvis Presley and his parents.

Which radar signature, traced by precipitation curling around a supercell's rotation, signals that a tornado may form?

A hook echo shows rain and hail being swept around a storm's rotation; it flags conditions ripe for a tornado rather than proving that one is on the ground.

Which radar upgrade lets forecasters detect lofted debris as a 'tornado debris signature'?

Dual-polarization radar sends both horizontal and vertical pulses, so it can tell tumbling wreckage from raindrops and lets forecasters confirm from the screen that a damaging tornado is under way.

What does an approaching tornado most commonly sound like?

Survivors most often compare an approaching tornado to a continuous rumble like a freight train; some describe a waterfall-like whoosh, and because many are audible only up close, sound is no reliable alarm.

In which type of dwelling do a disproportionate share of US tornado deaths occur?

A mobile home is no shelter even from a weak tornado, tie-downs or not: it is built so lightly that it starts to come apart at wind speeds that leave ordinary houses standing.

Which Texas city's May 1953 tornado killed 114 people?

Waco's tornado tore through the heart of downtown at the end of the working day on 11 May 1953; 30 of the 114 dead were in a six-storey furniture store that collapsed.

What do the letters PDS mean on the most urgent tornado watches?

A Particularly Dangerous Situation tag is kept for the rare watches when long-lived, violent tornadoes are possible; the same wording can also flag an exceptional straight-line windstorm.

The word 'tornado' is thought to derive from which Spanish word meaning 'thunderstorm'?

Tronada, from tronar, 'to thunder', is the likely origin: English sailors mangled the word, and its r and o probably swapped under the pull of Spanish tornar, 'to turn'.

How large a pressure drop did a probe record inside a violent tornado near Manchester, South Dakota, in 2003?

100 millibars, about a tenth of normal air pressure, vanished as the tornado ran over a 'turtle' probe that a storm chaser had set down in its path moments earlier.

Which country reports the second-highest number of tornadoes each year, after the United States?

Canada's tornadoes strike mostly in southern Ontario and the Prairie provinces, and the true count is thought to be higher than reported, because many touch down unseen in thinly peopled country.

In 2008 a tornado hit which city's downtown while a college basketball tournament played on inside its domed stadium?

Atlanta's Georgia Dome was damaged as the EF2 passed, but a last-second shot had just sent the game to overtime, keeping thousands of fans inside instead of out on the streets.

Which UK organisation has run a network of storm spotters since 1974?

TORRO, the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, has plenty to log: the UK reports about 33 tornadoes a year, among the most for its size of any country, though nearly all are weak.

What did the research device nicknamed TOTO stand for?

The TOtable Tornado Observatory was a 55-gallon drum packed with instruments that scientists tried to set in a tornado's path in the 1980s; they rarely managed it, but the idea inspired the film Twister.

Who directed the 1996 storm-chasing blockbuster Twister?

Jan de Bont shot Die Hard and Basic Instinct as a cinematographer before turning director with Speed; Twister was only his second film in the chair, and an even bigger hit.

In Twister, what is the name of the sensor-filled device the chasers try to deploy?

Dorothy was modelled on TOTO, a real 1980s instrument drum, but her swarm of flying sensors is pure fiction: the scientists behind the original say no such technology exists.

Who directed the 2024 standalone sequel Twisters?

Lee Isaac Chung came to the disaster sequel from Minari, his quiet, award-winning drama drawn from a childhood on a small farm in rural Arkansas.

Which Missouri city was struck by an EF5 tornado in May 2011 that killed about 160 people?

Joplin's EF5 of 22 May 2011 killed about 160 people, the highest toll from a single US tornado since 1947, and wrecked St. John's Regional Medical Center.

Which storm chaser and engineer was killed alongside his son and a colleague by an Oklahoma tornado?

Tim Samaras, an engineer who built probes to sit in a tornado's path, died with his son Paul and colleague Carl Young when the huge, erratic twister they were tracking overran their car.

Which Kansas town was hit by the first tornado ever rated EF5, in May 2007?

Greensburg had about 95% of its buildings destroyed or badly damaged, then set out to rebuild as a 'green town', with a rule that its city-owned buildings meet the top LEED Platinum standard.

Which Ohio city suffered the deadliest single tornado of the 1974 Super Outbreak?

Xenia's F5 killed more than 30 people on 3 April 1974; at the high school, students rehearsing a play ran for the hallway seconds before the storm dropped a school bus onto their stage.

What coincidence put tiny Codell, Kansas into tornado lore?

Same date, three years running: tornadoes struck Codell on 20 May in 1916, 1917 and 1918. The date falls at the peak of the Plains tornado season, which shortens the odds of such a repeat.

Which is the only continent where tornadoes have never been recorded?

Antarctica is the lone exception because tornadoes need warm, moist air; every other continent supplies it somewhere, and Argentina is among the busiest tornado zones outside the United States.

A rare 1953 tornado killed more than 90 people in which New England city?

Worcester's tornado of 9 June 1953 flung wreckage so high that pieces of mattress, coated in ice inside the storm, came down in Boston Harbor.

Which 2014 found-footage film follows a documentary crew as tornadoes tear through the fictional town of Silverton?

Into the Storm made about $160 million on a $50 million budget even though critics found it clumsily scripted; the one thing they agreed to admire was its tornado effects.

The first official US tornado forecast, in March 1948, came from officers of which service?

Air Force weather officers Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller made the call at Tinker Air Force Base five days after a tornado had hit it, and a second one struck the base that evening, as forecast.

Sean Casey's armored Tornado Intercept Vehicles film twisters with what kind of camera?

IMAX footage was the whole point: Casey armoured the vehicles so he could park in a tornado's path, and the film he shot became a 2011 giant-screen documentary narrated by Twister star Bill Paxton.

Storm chaser Reed Timmer's first Dominator vehicle was modified from which SUV?

A Chevrolet Tahoe was the base: Timmer chased in the stock SUV for a season, then armoured it with bulletproof sheet metal and clear Lexan panels against the wreckage flying around a tornado.

The third-deadliest tornado in US history tore through which big river city in 1896?

St. Louis lost at least 255 people on 27 May 1896, and the tornado went on to cross the Mississippi, proof that neither big cities nor great rivers turn a twister aside.

The second-deadliest US tornado struck which Mississippi river town in 1840?

Natchez lost at least 317 people in 1840, and the real toll may well have been higher: deaths among enslaved people often went uncounted in the tallies of that era.

The 1987 tornado remembered locally as 'Black Friday' struck which Canadian city?

Edmonton's tornado of Friday, 31 July 1987 killed 27 people and hurled oil tanks about the city's Refinery Row; Alberta built its emergency public warning system as a direct result.

Canada's only F5 tornado hit the town of Elie in 2007 in which province?

Elie, Manitoba, west of Winnipeg, was hit on 22 June 2007 by Canada's only F5 tornado, which lifted a well-built anchored house whole and shredded it in mid-air, yet caused no deaths.

Which English city's southern suburbs were torn up by a tornado on 28 July 2005?

Birmingham's tornado of 28 July 2005 ripped through Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley and did about £40 million of damage, yet nobody was killed.

A deadly 1984 tornado outbreak struck the Ivanovo region north of which capital city?

North of Moscow, the 9 June 1984 outbreak around Ivanovo killed at least 69 people by the official count; its strongest tornado threw a 50-tonne water tank some 200 metres.

An old myth held that which corner of a building was the safest spot in a tornado?

The myth held that the southwest corner was safest because tornadoes usually approach from the southwest and would throw debris to the northeast; damage surveys in the 1960s and 70s showed it was wrong.

What debunked tornado myth claims you can protect a house by equalizing air pressure?

Opening the windows does nothing: a tornado's pressure drop is far too small to burst a house, and windows shatter from airborne wreckage long before pressure matters; wasting time on them is dangerous.

Britain's T-scale of tornado intensity was devised as an extension of which wind scale?

Beaufort force 8, a gale, is where it begins: physicist Terence Meaden devised the T-scale in the 1970s to carry the sailors' wind scale on up into tornado strength.

Which actress played tornado scientist Jo Harding opposite Bill Paxton in the 1996 film Twister?

Helen Hunt was best known as a sitcom star on Mad About You when she made Twister; her next big film, As Good as It Gets, won her the Best Actress Oscar.

The tornado in 1939's The Wizard of Oz was made from 35 feet of which material?

Effects chief Arnold Gillespie built the twister from a 35-foot muslin stocking after a rubber cone proved too stiff; the muslin funnel hung from a gantry and was dusted with fuller's earth.

Before moving to Norman, Oklahoma in 1997, the nation's tornado-watch forecasters were based in which city?

Kansas City hosted the national severe-storms forecasters from 1954; they had moved there from Washington partly to quiet press complaints that the office sat far from tornado country.

Which Chicago-area town was hit in 1990 by the only official August F5 in the US?

The Plainfield tornado of 28 August 1990 killed 29 people and is the only F5 ever recorded in the US in August; no tornado warning had been issued when it struck.

The Enhanced Fujita scale was developed in the early 2000s at which university?

Texas Tech set up its wind research centre after a tornado killed 26 people in its home city of Lubbock in 1970; three decades later that centre led the team that built the Enhanced Fujita scale.