Tornado Essay

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A tornado is defined as being a mobile, destructive vortex of violently rotating winds having the appearance of a funnel-shaped cloud and advancing beneath a large storm system.(SPC) Although tornadoes usually only last for a few minutes, they can be very destructive and deadly. The average wind speed in most tornadoes is about one hundred and twelve miles per hour or less.(SPC) The most violent tornadoes are capable of massive destruction with their wind speed reaching two hundred and fifty miles per hour.(SPC) The damage path of a tornado can be more than one mile wide and fifty miles long.(SPC) In a normal year, more than eight hundred tornadoes are reported across the United States with death tolls reaching eighty and injuries happening to over one thousand five hundred people.(SPC) Tornadoes are split up according to the strength of the tornado. Tornadoes are ranked using the Fujita Scale which contains five categories of wind speeds that are estimated according to the damage left behind.(TWC) It is almost impossible to gather actual wind speed measurements as most wind speed measuring devices are destroyed during the tornado and since they come and go so fast, Doppler radar measurements are usually not done. Most tornadoes, about sixty-nine percent, are called weak.(TWC) This means they only last …show more content…

(TWC) Strong tornadoes last about twenty minutes with wind speeds ranging from one hundred ten and two hundred and five miles per hour.(TWC) This type of tornado is responsible for approximately thirty percent of tornado deaths.(TWC) The Fujita Scale shows the damage from these tornadoes being considerable and severe.(TWC) Results from a strong tornado will be seen as mobile homes are demolished, trees are uprooted, roofs and walls of houses will be torn down, trains may be overturned off the tracks, and cars thrown around

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