91 Fun Facts About Tornadoes

Which nickname is given to the broad swath of the central United States that twisters strike most often?

Tornado Alley is only a nickname, and forecasters call it misleading: the main threat shifts from the Southeast in the cooler months to the northern Plains by early summer.

Why do mobile-home parks seem to attract twisters in so many news reports?

Even weak tornadoes wreck them: a brief twister that would barely mark a sturdy house can blow a mobile home apart, so forecasters call the parks reliable indicators, not attractors, of tornadoes.

What is the rotating updraft in a supercell that often precedes a tornado called?

A mesocyclone is a rotating column of air a few miles wide inside a supercell, and spotting one on radar is a key sign a tornado may follow.

What type of cloud is most commonly associated with tornado formation?

Cumulonimbus, the towering storm cloud, breeds the violent tornadoes, though weaker ones can hang from an ordinary cumulus.

What do forecasters call the Plains boundary where desert air from the west meets humid Gulf air and severe storms often erupt?

The dry line marks the edge of the Gulf's moisture in spring and early summer; it usually pushes east during the afternoon and retreats west after dark, and storms fire along it.

A famous 1991 video of a TV crew riding out a tornado made which roadside spot a dangerously popular shelter?

A highway overpass is among the worst places to shelter: the 1991 crew met only the fringe of a weak tornado, and people copying them under other bridges have been killed.

Tornadoes have been recorded on every continent but one; which is the exception?

Antarctica is the exception: tornadoes need warm, moist air, so they favor the middle latitudes and have been recorded on every other continent.

When the EF scale replaced the Fujita scale in 2007, what became of earlier US tornadoes' ratings?

They were left unchanged: the EF scale took effect on February 1, 2007 with no plan to re-evaluate older storms, so F5s and EF5s sit side by side in the record.

Besides the wind itself, what do forecasters call the biggest threat to life in a tornado?

Flying debris is the biggest threat to anything alive: winds that strong put cars in the air and turn broken glass into lethal missiles.

Tornado sirens are designed to warn which group of people?

People who are outdoors are the only intended audience: the sirens began as wartime air-raid alarms and were never built to be heard inside a closed-up house.

Which radar signature, formed as precipitation wraps a supercell's rotating updraft, warns a tornado may be forming?

The hook echo was first tied to a confirmed tornado by accident, in 1953: a crew testing a radar built to measure rainfall recorded an odd curl that turned out to mark a tornado on the ground.

Viewed from above, which direction do most tornadoes in the Northern Hemisphere rotate?

Counter-clockwise, the same way hurricanes turn north of the equator; the rare tornadoes that spin the other way tend to be small and weak.

What do storm chasers call a non-supercell tornado whose spin starts near the ground and is stretched up by an updraft?

Landspout was coined because the funnel looks like a weak waterspout that happens to form over land; most are small and short-lived.

What does an approaching tornado most commonly sound like?

A continuous rumble like a train is the classic description; some produce a whoosh like a waterfall, and many are audible only up close, so sound is no warning.

What does a 'Tornado Warning' mean?

One has been spotted or shown on radar when a warning goes out; a watch is the weaker product, meaning tornadoes are possible over the next several hours.

Which storm is officially credited with the longest tornado track on record, 219 miles?

The Tri-State, 1925 tornado is credited with a 219-mile path, though researchers still debate whether it was one continuous tornado or a family of them.

What is the broad, abrupt lowering of a cloud base from which tornadoes sometimes form called?

A wall cloud marks a storm's strongest updraft, and once it starts to rotate, spotters watch it as the place a tornado is most likely to drop.

The United States averages roughly how many tornadoes a year?

About 1,200 is the modern average; reports climbed sharply in the 1990s, when a new Doppler radar network and more spotters began catching tornadoes that once went unrecorded.

What is a short-lived swirling wind on a thunderstorm's outflow edge, not a true tornado, called?

A gustnado almost never connects the surface to the cloud base, which is why it is almost never counted as a tornado.

How long does a typical supercell thunderstorm last?

2-4 hours is typical, against an hour or less for an ordinary storm cell, because a supercell feeds off a tilted, rotating updraft that keeps it organized.

'Tornado' is a reshaping of tronada, a word for a thunderstorm in which language?

Spanish tronada, 'thunderstorm', comes from tronar, 'to thunder'; English reshaped the word, probably under the influence of tornar, 'to turn'.

Which country suffered the deadliest tornado on record, a 1989 storm officially blamed for about 1,300 deaths?

Bangladesh's Daulatpur-Saturia tornado of April 26, 1989 tops the World Meteorological Organization's list; dense population and flimsy housing lie in the path of the country's violent pre-monsoon storms.

South America's tornado corridor, one of the busiest outside the United States, is centered on which country's plains?

Argentina's Pampas lie where cold, dry air from Patagonia and the Andes collides with warm, moist air from the north, breeding supercells, hail and tornadoes.

Which university's teams have been the Cyclones since 1895, when a newspaper likened its footballers to a tornado?

Iowa State earned the name after its footballers stunned Northwestern 36-0 and the next day's headline read 'Struck by a Cyclone'; tornadoes were then commonly called cyclones.

The widest tornado ever measured, 2.6 miles across, struck near which Oklahoma town in 2013?

El Reno's tornado spanned 2.6 miles on mobile radar, yet it is officially rated only EF3: it crossed mostly open country, and surveyors found no damage to support anything higher.

Which storm chaser, famed for in-situ pressure probes, died in a 2013 Oklahoma tornado?

Tim Samaras died with his son Paul and colleague Carl Young when the tornado abruptly turned north, sped up and kept widening, overtaking their car before they could get clear.

A 2008 tornado damaged Atlanta's Georgia Dome while a tournament game in which sport was in overtime?

Basketball's SEC tournament was in overtime when the EF2 ripped holes in the dome; the game was finished after an hour's delay, but the remaining games were moved to a much smaller college arena.

Mobile radar clocked record tornado winds of over 300 mph inside which 1999 storm?

The Bridge Creek–Moore, Oklahoma tornado's record wind was read by a radar beam above ground level, not at the surface; its F5 rating rests on the damage survey, because the scale grades what a tornado destroys, not its wind.

Which rare NWS alert is reserved for a confirmed violent tornado bearing down on a populated area?

A tornado emergency is an upgraded tornado warning; a forecaster improvised the first one in 1999, sending it as a standalone statement apart from the warning itself.

In 1971, Ted Fujita introduced his tornado damage scale while a professor where?

Fujita introduced the scale in 1971 at the University of Chicago, where he spent his career; Allen Pearson of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center added path length and width, hence Fujita-Pearson scale.

Besides his scale, Ted Fujita discovered which aircraft-threatening wind phenomenon?

Fujita identified downbursts in 1975 while investigating Eastern Air Lines Flight 66's crash at JFK; his survey of starburst damage patterns at Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped him picture wind slamming into the ground.

Fujita's original theoretical scale ran to F12, a wind speed equal to what?

Mach 1, the speed of sound, capped the 13-step scale Fujita drew up to link everyday wind scales with supersonic ones; he meant only F0 to F5 for real tornadoes.

Which country adopted the Enhanced Fujita scale on April 1, 2013?

Canada did not take the scale as it stood: its version has 31 damage indicators to the American 28, with new ones such as farm silos and grain bins.

The Enhanced Fujita scale was developed from 2000 to 2004 at which school's wind engineering center?

Texas Tech's wind center was founded after an F5 tore through its home city of Lubbock in 1970; from 2000 to 2004 its engineers and meteorologists rebuilt Fujita's scale there.

Under the Enhanced Fujita scale, an EF5 rating begins at estimated winds above what speed?

200 mph is where EF5 begins; the old F5 band started at 261 mph, but engineers judged that far lower winds could do the same damage.

The first tornado ever rated EF5 struck which Kansas town on May 4, 2007?

Greensburg, Kansas was hit on May 4, 2007 by the first tornado rated EF5 on the new scale; about 1.7 miles wide, it levelled roughly 95% of the town.

What did the Kansas town levelled by a 2007 EF5 tornado choose to do next?

Rebuild as an eco-town: the council required every city building to meet the top LEED Platinum standard, and ten wind turbines now supply its electricity.

The 1925 Tri-State tornado did its worst killing, including 234 deaths in Murphysboro, in which state?

Illinois lost most of the 695 dead, 541 of them in one 40-minute stretch; witnesses said the storm looked like rolling fog, not a funnel, so many never saw the danger coming.

In a 'PDS' tornado watch, the rarest and most urgent kind, what do the letters stand for?

Particularly Dangerous Situation wording is added at the forecaster's discretion only in rare situations, when long-lived, strong and violent tornadoes are possible.

An 1896 tornado killed at least 255 people in about 20 minutes in which city?

St. Louis lost at least 255 people on May 27, 1896; as the tornado crossed the river it drove a wooden plank clean through a wrought-iron plate of the Eads Bridge.

The 1899 New Richmond, Wisconsin, tornado hit a town packed with visitors for what event?

A circus, the Gollmar Brothers' show, had drawn hundreds of visitors to a town of about 2,000, and the tornado struck as the crowds were heading home; 117 people died.

Which future music star survived the deadly 1936 Tupelo tornado as a one-year-old?

Elvis Presley, born in Tupelo in January 1935, was 15 months old when the April 5, 1936 tornado killed 216 people there; the Gainesville, Georgia tornado struck the next day.

An F5 tornado killed 114 people in the downtown of which Texas city in May 1953?

Waco had an old legend that tornadoes could not strike the city; the F5 arrived wrapped in heavy rain, so few people downtown saw it coming.

The 1953 Worcester tornado, which killed 94, is the deadliest on record in which US region?

New England's deadliest tornado killed 94 people on June 9, 1953 and dropped debris on Cape Cod, 110 miles away; it helped push the US to build a national network of weather radars and spotters.

The 1953 Flint–Beecher F5 that killed 116 people struck which state?

Michigan's deadliest tornado ran straight down one road through the Flint suburb of Beecher, where 113 of the 116 died along a four-mile stretch and some 20 families lost more than one member.

The costliest single US tornado, at $2.8 billion, hit which Missouri city on May 22, 2011?

The Joplin EF5 of May 22, 2011 killed 158 people and wrecked St. John's Regional Medical Center, one of the city's two hospitals; insured losses alone topped $2 billion.

The 2011 Super Outbreak's deadliest tornado, Hackleburg–Phil Campbell, struck which state?

Alabama's Hackleburg-Phil Campbell EF5 killed more than 70 people, the worst toll from any US tornado since 1955, a mark that stood for less than a month before a Missouri tornado passed it.

Which Ohio city was devastated by the deadliest tornado of the 1974 Super Outbreak, an F5?

Xenia had roughly half its buildings damaged or destroyed; students rehearsing a play at the high school took cover seconds before the tornado dropped a school bus onto their stage.

The 1974 Brandenburg tornado is the only officially documented F5 in which state?

Brandenburg, Kentucky was hit on April 3, 1974 during the Super Outbreak by an F5 that killed 31 people, the only tornado officially rated F5 in the state.

In The Wizard of Oz, the farmhouse carried off by the tornado lands on whom?

The Wicked Witch of the East is killed by the falling house, which hands her ruby slippers to the newcomer and sets her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, on the trail.

The 1997 Jarrell, Texas F5 was infamous for what unusual behavior?

The Jarrell F5 of May 27, 1997 was crawling forward very slowly as it entered Double Creek Estates, and surveyors think that long exposure explains why almost nothing there was left standing.

What made the 1990 Plainfield tornado, an F5 that killed 29, so notorious among forecasters?

No warning was issued in time: the first tornado warning went out ten minutes after the storm had hit Plainfield, a failure that drove upgrades in radar and forecasting.

April 10, 1979, when a tornado killed 42 people in Wichita Falls, Texas, became known locally as what?

Terrible Tuesday's toll held a lesson: more than half of the 42 dead were in vehicles, many of them people who had left houses the tornado never touched in order to flee.

The 2007 Elie tornado, the first F5 its country ever recorded, hit which Canadian province?

Manitoba's Elie tornado hurt no one, but video showed it lifting an entire well-built house off its foundation and tearing it apart in mid-air, which earned the F5 rating.

The 'Black Friday' tornado of July 31, 1987, which killed 27 people, struck which Canadian city?

Edmonton's F4 stayed on the ground for about an hour and tossed oil tanks around Refinery Row; Alberta built a province-wide broadcast alert system as a direct result.

The June 2014 Pilger event on the Great Plains was famous for what rare sight?

On June 16, 2014 Pilger, Nebraska saw two violent tornadoes at once, twin EF4s running side by side; the western one devastated the town before being absorbed by yet another tornado from the same supercell.

The December 10, 2021 'Quad-State' tornado flattened a candle factory in which town?

Mayfield's candle factory collapsed with about 110 people on shift; early reports of a 250-mile track inspired the 'Quad-State' name, but surveys put the tornado's own path at about 165 miles.

On March 3, 2020, an EF3 tornado tore through the downtown of which Tennessee city?

Nashville's EF3 crossed the north edge of downtown and East Nashville after midnight, along almost the same path a tornado had taken in 1998; the same supercell then spawned an EF4 at Cookeville.

The March 24, 2023 EF4 that devastated Rolling Fork struck which state?

Rolling Fork, Mississippi was devastated on March 24, 2023 by an EF4 with winds near 195 mph; it stayed on the ground for 71 minutes and went on to hit a town called Midnight.

An EF4 tornado struck which Ohio city on the night of Memorial Day, 2019?

Dayton's EF4 ran 18 miles through Brookville, Trotwood and the city's north side late on May 27, 2019; it injured 166 people, yet no one was killed directly.

The nickname for the tornado-prone central US first appeared in 1952 as the title of what?

A weather research project: two Air Force forecasters, the same pair who had made the first successful tornado forecast four years earlier, used the phrase as the title of their 1952 severe-storm study.

Compared with Plains tornadoes, significant 'Dixie Alley' tornadoes are more likely to strike when?

Dixie Alley tornadoes are far more likely to strike at night: they come earlier in the year, when days are short, and Gulf moisture keeps the air unstable long after sunset.

The Storm Prediction Center is headquartered in which Oklahoma city?

The Storm Prediction Center moved to Norman from Kansas City in 1997, and since 2006 it has shared the National Weather Center there with the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Before October 2007, how did the NWS define the area covered by a tornado alert?

Until October 1, 2007 warnings were issued by county; since then they are drawn as polygons along the storm's projected path, cutting the area needlessly alerted.

The first successful tornado forecast, in March 1948, was made at which Oklahoma air base?

At Tinker Air Force Base, Fawbush and Miller issued the first tornado forecast on March 25, 1948, five days after a tornado struck the base; a second hit that evening as predicted.

Until 1938, the US Weather Bureau banned its staff from doing what?

Using the word 'tornado' in forecasts was forbidden for fear of panic; even after that rule went, the FCC kept tornado warnings off the air until a TV weatherman defied it in 1954.

Upward of 400 waterspouts a year are observed around which island chain?

The Florida Keys see upward of 400 waterspouts a year; most are weak fair-weather spouts that form under lines of cumulus rather than from rotating supercells.

A fair-weather waterspout's five-stage life cycle begins with what sign on the water?

The cycle starts with a dark spot on the water, followed by a spiral pattern, a spray ring, the mature visible funnel and finally decay, usually all within 20 minutes.

A fire tornado spawned by the 2018 Carr Fire struck which California city?

Redding's west side was struck on July 26, 2018 by a fire-born whirl with winds over 143 mph, the equal of an EF3 tornado; it towered some 18,000 feet and toppled transmission towers.

In Australia, a dust devil is commonly known by what name?

A willy willy is the everyday Australian name for a dust devil, which spins up from hot ground under clear skies; the same word was once used for a tropical cyclone too.

For over a century, which corner of a house was wrongly said to be the safest in a tornado?

The southwest corner was favored on the theory that the wreckage would be carried off to the northeast; a Kansas study later found it was the most damaged part of three in four homes hit.

Opening a house's windows before a tornado was wrongly believed to do what?

People believed opening windows would equalize air pressure and keep the house from 'exploding'; in fact the tornado blasts the windows open anyway, and stopping to do it wastes precious shelter time.

The 1979 instrument barrel TOTO inspired which device in the film Twister?

Dorothy was modelled on TOTO, the TOtable Tornado Observatory, a barrel of up to 350 pounds that two people could roll off a pickup in half a minute; it never took a direct hit.

Who directed the 1996 blockbuster Twister?

Jan de Bont took on Twister fresh from his debut hit Speed, after walking away from an American Godzilla; Steven Spielberg, first attached to direct it himself, stayed on as executive producer.

Which best-selling novelist co-wrote Twister's screenplay with his wife?

Michael Crichton and his then wife, Anne-Marie Martin, said they built the script on a documentary about storm chasers and the plot of the romantic comedy His Girl Friday.

Twister is notable as one of the first films released in the US on which home format?

Twister was among the very first titles released on DVD in the United States, arriving on March 25, 1997, the month the format launched there.

The armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle, built to film inside tornadoes in IMAX, was designed by whom?

Sean Casey built two armored trucks to carry an IMAX camera into tornadoes; TIV 2, with bullet-resistant windows and a filming turret, drove into a Wyoming tornado on June 5, 2009.

Storm chaser Reed Timmer's armored chase vehicles carry what name?

Dominator 1 was a Chevrolet Tahoe clad in bulletproof sheet metal and Lexan; in 2009 a Nebraska tornado strengthened right over it and blew out the driver's window, cutting Timmer's face.

The first Doppler on Wheels mobile radar was completed in 1995 at which school?

The University of Oklahoma finished the first Doppler on Wheels in 1995, just in time for that spring's big field experiment, where the truck-mounted radar scanned its first tornado.

Which sitcom star played storm chaser Jo Harding in the 1996 film Twister?

Helen Hunt was the director's first choice; the studio balked because the Mad About You star had no big film roles behind her, but he insisted.

Which 1994-95 field project, named by an acronym, sent a fleet of instrumented cars after Plains tornadoes?

VORTEX, the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, ringed storms with about 18 instrumented vehicles and for the first time measured a tornado through its whole life cycle.

Which actor played YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens in Twisters, the 2024 sequel to Twister?

Glen Powell played the swaggering chaser billed as the 'Tornado Wrangler'; the film was shot around Oklahoma in 2023, pausing midway for the actors' strike.

The small whirls that revolve inside a large multiple-vortex tornado are called what?

Suction vortices can add over 100 mph to the wind, which explains why one house is obliterated while its neighbor barely loses shingles.

The first storm identified as a supercell was a 1959 hailstorm over Wokingham, a town in which country?

The United Kingdom's Wokingham storm was picked apart by Keith Browning and Frank Ludlam, whose 1962 study was the first detailed account of the long-lived rotating storm that breeds most violent tornadoes.

The dry, sinking air wrapping around a tornado can carve what visible feature into the cloud base?

The clear slot is carved by the rear flank downdraft warming and drying as it descends; chasers watch for the horseshoe-shaped gap as a sign a tornado may form.

Forecasters say every home needs a NOAA weather radio, likening it to which household safety device?

A smoke detector for severe weather is the forecasters' phrase: the radio sits quiet until a tornado alert covers your area, then sounds an alarm loud enough to wake a sleeping household.

Britain's TORRO tornado scale was proposed by Terence Meaden as an extension of which scale?

Beaufort's wind forces suited Meaden's aim, a scale of wind speed where Fujita's grades damage; in practice, though, surveyors on both scales mostly have only the damage to go on.

The costliest tornado ever recorded in Great Britain struck which city on 28 July 2005?

The Birmingham tornado of 28 July 2005 tore through Sparkbrook and Moseley and did about £40 million of damage, yet no one was killed, which the council's leader called a miracle.

The 35-foot tornado in The Wizard of Oz (1939) was built from what material?

Effects chief Arnold Gillespie built the twister as a 35-foot muslin sock hung from a steel gantry after a rubber cone proved too stiff, with dust blown in to look like a funnel.

The deadly 1936 Gainesville, Georgia tornado was unusual for striking at what time of day?

Early morning: the tornado tore through the business district with the working day under way, and the Cooper Pants Factory collapsed and caught fire with scores of workers inside.

A tornado that looks wider than it is tall is nicknamed what?

A wedge can be so broad that, from a distance, even experienced spotters mistake it for a low-hanging cloud; the shape often goes with violent tornadoes, though plenty of wedges are rated lower.