The average tornado—a mostly harmless cyclone of air that connects a storm cloud above and Earth’s surface below—has a lifespan of only a few minutes. However, when they move away from the average, tornadoes are considered some of the most destructive weather events in the world. The wildest of tornadoes can last for hours and span miles in diameter, reaching up to 300 miles (480 km) per hour in speed. In order to be prepared for these powerful twisters, meteorologists (scientists who study atmospheric weather patterns) have spent decades investigating the causes of tornadoes. While the exact conditions are different for each, in order to understand how a tornado forms, we must first understand the storm that is essentially its parent—the supercell thunderstorm.
A supercell, unlike a regular thunderstorm, contains the most important ingredient in the making of a tornado: a spinning column of air at its center, called a vortex. As a supercell grows in size, the vortex in the middle will begin to tilt, siphoning warm air and moisture upward and spewing out cold dry air toward the ground. The updraft of warm air causes the vortex to swell with water vapor, creating a spiraling funnel cloud at its center—the first visible sign that a tornado is brewing. The cool downdraft of air then battles the funnel cloud’s upward spiral, focusing the cloud into a smaller area and increasing its speed. With enough pressure and weight from the downdraft of cool air, the quickening funnel cloud is forced to touch down on the ground, and a tornado is officially born. In the United States, the area where tornadoes most frequently occur—in portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska—is known as Tornado Alley.
By understanding the signs of a tornado in the making, meteorologists can issue warnings and signals to areas that might soon become a little too familiar with one. Weather surveillance systems such as Doppler radars use a technology similar to echolocation that reflects pulses off water vapor in the air to record the speed and movement of a storm. These systems allow scientists to detect the telltale spiraling of supercell thunderstorms long before a funnel cloud is ever seen.