Bangladesh Tornado

The United States sees the most tornadoes of any country in the world each year, but it 's not the location of the deadliest tornado in recorded history. Have you heard of the Bangladesh tornado of 1989? The most deadly tornado known to humankind is the

April 26, 1989 Daulatpur-Salturia Tornado. The estimated size of the tornado was 1 mile wide. In just a matter of minutes, the horrific twister claimed thousands of lives.

The towns were completely destroyed and 80,000 were left homeless. This is a very poor country so the aftermath of this tornado was horrific. At the time of the tornado

Bangladesh was already going through a 6-month drought, which intensified the atmospheric conditions allowing a deadly massive tornado to form.

This tornado

Even though the tornado wasn 't an F5, the country was-and is- densely populated, and killed many people before dying down.

Damage was extensive over the area, as countless trees were uprooted and every home within a six square kilometer area of the tornado 's path was completely destroyed. There were absolutely no signs of standing infrastructures let after the tornado passed. The tornado was estimated to be approximately one mile wide, and had a path that was about 50 miles long, through the poor areas and slums of

Bangladesh. Approximately 80,000 people were left homeless by the storm. Saturia and

Manikgani in the district were both fully destroyed by the tornado. All together this tornado caused a total of about 1.5 million United States dollars in damages. This number would have been much higher had the house and properties been worth more.

If the same tornado went through a similarly populated area in the United States with standard $150,000 to $200,000 houses, the damage would have been around 2.5 billion to 3.2 billion.

In Bangladesh, due to the orbital movement of the earth the wind changes direction twice a year, once when the Tropic of Cancer starts moving towards the sun

The frequency of devastating pre-monsoon local storms usually reaches its peak in April, while a few occur in May and the least in March. Wind shear and instability are maximized during this time period as warm, moist air flows northward from the Bay of

Bengal and combines with a westerly wind flow in the upper atmosphere. This makes

Bangladesh one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world today. They are able to experience possible F4 or even F5 intensity tornadoes. Sadly, Bangladesh is also the county where the deadliest tropical cyclone in history struck. On November 11, 1970, the "Bhola Cyclone" killed at least 300,000 people after it sent a 20 to 30 feet high storm surge into the low-lying Bangladesh coastline.

I previously mentioned how Bangladesh was already going through a drought during the time of this tornado so I want to touch a little more on this. Drought is a main problem for many nations. In Bangladesh the causes of drought are related to non- availability of surface water resources and climate variability. The direct cause of a shortage of rainfall may be because of one or more factors including