Why is it that it seems like tornados never hit major cities (even in south and Midwest) seems like it’s always small towns. Even if they do spawn in major cities they seem to avoid any major areas. I Don’t seem to hear of massive cities getting leveled by tornados. (Atleast in my area)
In: Planetary Science
Despite how destructive they are, tornadoes are really small and don’t last very long. They’re less (often *way* less) than a mile wide, run by in a couple of minutes, then they’re gone. For comparison, a hurricane is like 300 miles wide and inches along for days at a time. Now, a violent storm that’s a couple dozen yards wide feels huge if it’s on top of you, but it is very tiny compared to the continental United States. It can honestly be very tiny even compared to a city block. A tornado could reduce your next door neighbor’s house to rubble without your house losing a shingle.
Cities are also very small compared to the continental United States (or a tornado alley state, or even most counties in tornado alley, which is how warnings usually come through). Not as small as tornadoes, but small enough that they don’t necessarily run into each other very often just by sheer statistics. Though it does happen. To my knowledge, a tornado has touched down within Chicago city limits twice in my lifetime. A tornado did damage to a building in Salt Lake City once too. But tornadoes just aren’t big enough to hit any specific location often, or destroy a big city in any spectacular way in the few minutes it’s on the ground (and most tornadoes aren’t the strongest “town leveling” ones anyway. The towns that get totally wrecked are simultaneously very small and very unlucky).
I’ve also heard that the density of large buildings may make it hard for tornadoes to form then stay around in big cities for wind reasons, but that may fully or partially be a myth.
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