What Is A Tornado? Meaning And How It’s Formed
TORNADO – In this topic, we will now know the meaning of a column of air called a tornado and how it is formed.
According to Weather, it is a violently rotating column of air which extends from the base of a thunderstorm down to the ground.
These have the capacity to totally obliterate structures, uproot trees, and hurl objects through the air like deadly missiles.
How It Is Formed
According to UCAR, they can only form when a thunderstorm has a certain combination of winds.
The air that is rising in thunderstorms begins to spin when it is affected by the winds that are blowing in various directions.
The air starts to rise and is being pushed to the side by the wind and it will rise further and further that it starts spinning.
The situation is usually typical in the case of supercells, which is the strongest type of thunderstorm. However, not all spinning air forms a tornado.
For the column to form, it also requires air spinning near the ground, which occurs when the air in the storm sinks to the ground and spread across the land in gusts.
Gusts of warm air rise while the same of cooler air sink. This causes the air near the ground to start spinning.
The spinning air near the ground speeds up and is drawn inward toward its axis of rotation. This is called the conservation of angular momentum.
The rotating air moves horizontally across the ground and can be lifted vertically by the force of the rising, rotating air.
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