Tornado’s are the most violent and dangerous storms on earth so how is one created? Well a tornado needs two things to develop, a large amount of warm humid air and dry cold air. The warm humid air can normally be found in thunderstorms, when it is pushed up into cold dry air it becomes very unstable, the cold air on top the gives way this causes the storm winds to spin and creates a funnel shaped cloud. But it doesn’t become a tornado until it touches the ground.

When a tornado does hit the ground it comes at an average speed of 180km/h with an average width of 75 metres, they are very unpredictable and can do huge amounts of damage or in some cases so little you wouldn’t even think a tornado’s been through. Tornado’s come in all different strengths and sizes some small tornado’s might just break branches off trees or break windows then a big tornado could pull a house out of the ground and move it a hundred metres or more up the road. Depending on the strength of a tornado determines how long and far it will travel most weak tornado’s only last for 10Min’s and only travel a short distance while a strong tornado can last for over an hour and travel over a 100km.

Tornado’s are measured by a system called the Enhanced Fajita scale which ranges from F0 the weakest, to F5 the strongest, with each rank up the wind speed and destruction of the tornado increases. For a tornado to be rated as F5 it must have a wind speed of 320 km or more. A F5 tornado is very rare, but when one happens almost everything in its path is completely destroyed. The most common strength of a tornado is F0-F1 this only cause’s minor damage such as broken windows, tree’s up rooted, cars pushed off the road and damaged roofs.

Tornado’s and hurricanes are often mistaken for being the same but they are not, even though they are very similar in many ways. So what is the difference between them? Well first of all tornado’s are formed from instability between warm air rising and hitting cold air. Normally they are started by a thunderstorm. A hurricane on the other hand is formed by wet humid air above the ocean being evaporated causes air currents from different directions to hit and converge then creating a hurricane. Hurricanes need water vapor to fuel them this means when one goes onto land it gets weakened. A hurricane is different to a tornado because it can cause tsunamis or flooding while tornado’s do not associate with water. Lastly the most important difference is that hurricanes can be are easy to identify 2-3 days before they happen, their route and wind speed can be used to warn towns or people in its path. On the other hand tornado’s can form within 5-10Min’s without any warning.