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tornado
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Learn about the disastrous and deadly power of tornadoes
How do tornadoes form?
Can We Predict Natural Disasters?
Map of the contiguous United States shaded to show the average annual frequency of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles from 1950 to 1995. The highest frequencies, indicated by red and orange, are concentrated in Tornado Alley, stretching from northern Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas to Nebraska, with lower frequencies in surrounding regions.
Why does the United States have more tornadoes than other countries?
number and intensity of tornadoes in the U.S. per month Diagram of a thunderstorm showing a towering cumulonimbus cloud with labeled features including warm updrafts rising, cool downdrafts falling, precipitation at the base, and an anvil-shaped top spreading near the tropopause. Colored arrows indicate the movement of warm and cool air within the storm. A faint scale on the right marks cloud height in kilometers.
A cartoon tornado in a field populated by a farmhouse and other small buildings.
hook echo A large tornado touches down in a grassy field under dark clouds, with a National Severe Storms Laboratory field command vehicle parked on the roadside in the foreground.
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tornado summary
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Lightning over a farm field. Weather electricity thunderstorm light energy tree
Facts You Should Know: Weather Quiz
Umbrella colored like a rainbow sticking out above a sea of black umbrellas while it rains. (storm, weather)
Weather Words Vocabulary Quiz
rain. Child in the rain, wearing a rain coat, under a yellow umbrella. April Showers weather climate rain storm water drops
April Showers to March’s Lions and Lambs
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tornado

meteorology
Written by
John Snow
Professor and Dean Emeritus, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma.
John Snow
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
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•History

tornado, a small-diameter column of violently rotating air developed within a convective cloud and in contact with the ground. Tornadoes occur most often in association with thunderstorms during the spring and summer in the mid-latitudes of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These whirling atmospheric vortices can generate the strongest winds known on Earth: wind speeds in the range of 500 km (300 miles) per hour have been measured in extreme events. When winds of...

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