Some of my co-worked are located in Tornado Alley and I’ve been wondering how tornadoes form and die. I have never seen one in person (and I don’t want to). How is is different form a dust devil? I saw a dust devil form across the street and stop once it hit my garage door where I was standing. I just froze and didn’t know what to do.
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On the large scale, tornados are formed from the collision of cold dry air funneled in from the Rocky Mountains, hot dry air from the deserts in the south west, and warm wet air from the Gulf of Mexico. Those three air masses hit each other, and it causes large, spinning thunderstorms.
As far as I’m aware though, we still don’t know the exact causes that turn a thunderstorm into a tornado. Fluids are weird, and tornados are chaotic enough that it becomes difficult to determine all the factors that go into formation.
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