10 interesting facts about tornadoes

A tornado, or a tornado strikes, awes and at the same time terrifies all eyewitnesses of this incredible natural phenomenon. A giant funnel that appeared out of nowhere, absorbing everything in its path – you don’t see something like this every day.

Although, in order to admire a tornado, you must have a share of courage and recklessness, because it is extremely dangerous. A tornado is still a little-studied phenomenon, but researchers believe that there is a zone of low pressure at the epicenter of the tornado, which does not allow outside air to fill the inside of the funnel. Here are 10 interesting facts about tornadoes.

10 The shape that a tornado takes, as well as its color, smell, depend on what it has absorbed into itself.

Depending on the conditions in which the formation of the air funnel occurs, tornadoes can have a wide range of colors. Those that arise in a dry environment can be almost transparent and can be seen only by the debris swirling at the base.

Condensed tornadoes that absorb little or little debris may be gray or white in color. In the process of moving water droplets through the funnel, the color of the funnel may even turn bright blue.

Slow moving sinkholes that take in a significant amount of debris tend to get darker.

A tornado that has visited the Great Plains can turn red due to the reddish tint of the soil, and tornadoes that originate in mountainous areas, having absorbed a significant amount of snow flooring, can turn white.

9. A tornado can travel at over 100 km/h

The speed of movement of a tornado can vary significantly. On average, it reaches from 10–20 to 60–70 km/h. Depending on the characteristics of external conditions, due to the principle of wind distribution in the middle troposphere, a tornado can travel 100-120 km per hour.

8. The destructive energy of a tornado is so great that a piece of wood spun by it can break through a brick wall.

The energy of a typical tornado with a funnel radius of 1 km and an average speed of 70 m/s is equal to the energy of an atomic bomb of 20 kilotons of TNT.

The most destructive tornadoes are mainly recorded in the United States. To indicate the strength of tornadoes, a special Fujita-Pearson scale was created, which includes 7 categories, where zero (the smallest) in terms of wind strength corresponds to a hurricane wind on the Beaufort scale.

7. Some people managed, having been inside a tornado, managed to stay alive

If a person gets into the epicenter of a tornado, then at a wind speed in the funnel exceeding 55 m / s, he will be lifted and dropped in the so-called “scatter zone”, which is located at a height of several kilometers above the ground.

It happens that the speed of free fall is multiplied by the speed of downdrafts. In such a case, there is practically no chance of survival for a person who has fallen into the epicenter of a tornado – the body is flattened from a strong blow.

But it also happens that a tornado, having lifted a person with a whirlwind, begins to gradually weaken. When the speed of the updrafts drops below 55 m/s, and the funnel itself does not “diverge” in the middle, then a person who gets there can land quite softly on the ground. Similar cases have been recorded many times in history.

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A well-known case, testifying to the destructive power of a tornado, occurred in 1879. The so-called Irving tornado lifted a steel bridge 75 meters long across the Big Blue River and twisted it several times.

The wreckage of the bridge turned into a dense lump of steel partitions and ropes, bent in the most incredible way. This incident once again proves the presence of hypersonic vortices inside the tornado.

5. Tornado can cause rain of fish and frogs

History knows many examples when, instead of drops of water during rain, frogs, fish and other living creatures fell on people’s heads.

One of these “frog” rains was recorded in 1939 in Trowbridge (Great Britain). The tornado picked up these unfortunate amphibians from the surrounding marshes and splashed them onto the city.

And in Honduras, similar incidents have been occurring systematically since the XNUMXth century. There, instead of rain, not only frogs, but also fish fall to the ground.

4. In 1990, in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, a cow fell from the sky onto a ship, which was lifted into the air by a tornado somewhere.

A similar nuisance happened to a Japanese fishing boat. An adult cow really collapsed on it, as a result of which the ship sank. The surviving fishermen later claimed that on this day of the sky several cows collapsed at once.

3. In 1931, a tornado in the United States lifted an 83-ton train into the air.

The streams of air masses in a tornado funnel are considered to be among the most powerful and fastest on Earth. Air in a tornado moves at speeds up to 1300 km per hour. Thanks to this, the funnel can lift very heavy objects.

For example, in 1931, in a similar way, a tornado tore an entire train from its place, the mass of which was 83 tons.

2. So far, no way has been found to predict the occurrence of tornadoes.

Unlike cyclones, it is not possible to predict where a tornado will appear at the moment. If large cyclonic formations can be easily seen with the help of satellites, then tornadoes are completely impossible to identify either from space or with the help of radars.

Also, experts say that at the moment it is impossible to predict the appearance of a tornado also because scientists have not learned how to measure the temperature in the low layers of the atmosphere.

This is primarily due to the lack of technical capabilities, without which it will not be possible to accumulate statistical data, on the basis of which it would be possible to build more or less accurate forecasts.

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That is why it is better for lovers of extreme sensations not to risk their lives and health, and not to try to experience all the destructive power of the elements on their own skin.