Before a tornado occurs, the atmosphere needs to be unstable, with warm, moist air at the surface and cold, dry air aloft. Wind shear is also crucial, as it creates the rotation necessary for a tornado to form. Storm systems or supercell thunderstorms often provide the ideal conditions for tornado development.
A tornado usually forms from a mesocyclone, which occurs in the updraft or rear portion of some thunderstorms.
Sometimes tornadoes can evade radar detection. This most often happens if the tornado is short lived, and thus is missed as the radar beam rotates, or occurs far away from the radar. Fortunately this occurs less often with strong tornadoes.
Tornadoes most often form in the rear portion of a thunderstorm, and are generally preceded by heavy rain, thunder and lightning, and occasionally large hail.
Before it reaches the ground a developing tornado is known as a funnel cloud.
It is impossible to make long term predictions for when and where a tornado will occur. At best, we will know about this next tornado a few minutes before it forms.
The weather that precedes a tornado, including heavy rain and hail generally occurs in the front part of a supercell thunderstorm, with the tornado closer to the back.
The average lead time for a tornado warning is 15 minutes. Sometimes you get more warning, sometimes less.
It varies but most often it stops raining a few minutes beforehand. A break in the clouds may be seen, a sign of a downdraft that helps the tornado form. A number of tornado survivors recall it being unusually quite just before the tornado hits.
The potential energy before a tornado occurs is stored in the form of warm, moist air at the Earth's surface. This air has the potential to rise and release its energy as the storm system intensifies, leading to the formation of a tornado.
The area in which the tornado happens can erode the area away cause the animals that lived there to have no home or die of the tornado
Before a tornado hits the ground, a rotating column of air forms in the storm cloud known as a funnel cloud. This funnel cloud extends towards the ground, and once it makes contact, the tornado is then officially considered to have touched down.
A tornado. Tornadoes usually occur on land anyway.
It is simply a tornado. Most tornadoes occur on land.
When a tornado touches down it means it has reached the ground and can now cause damage. It is not a tornado until this occurs,
The calm before a tornado is due to the changing wind patterns and pressure within a tornado-producing storm. As the storm intensifies, air begins to rise rapidly, creating a calm and still area near the center of the storm before the tornado forms. This calm period is often short-lived and is followed by the destructive tornado itself.
It is rather unusual for a tornado to look like spaghetti. If a tornado does take on such an appearance it most likely means the tornado is dissipating or "roping out." It is believed that this occurs when cold air chokes of the warm air that feeds the mesocyclone, the rotating updraft that drives the tornado. When this happens the tornado begins to shrink and weaken. Winds within the parent storm can somtimes cause a tornado at this stage to bend into unusual shapes.
before a tornado it is usally calm after a strong tornado there is lots of debris and during a tornado there are things flying everywhere