why are tornadoes so rare outside of the US?
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The US has a perfect breeding ground for them. Cold, dry air comes down from Canada and meets up with the warm, most air from the Gulf of Mexico.
Mix in some instability from a warm spring/summer day, and you’ve got the makings of a hellfire and brimstone tornado producing thunderstorm.
There is more Tornadoes in the US than elsewhere, but it’s not rare outside of it. About 1,200 tornadoes in the US per year, about 100 in Canada. There is about 700 tornadoes in Europe. England actually have the highest number of tornadoes by square miles. Bangladesh doesn’t have as many Tornadoes, but they are on average bigger and deadlier.
But your question remain relevant. According to Dr. Harold Brooks from the NOAA.
“The basic ingredients for severe thunderstorms that can make tornadoes are warm, moist air near the ground, relatively dry, cool air aloft (about 10,000 to 30,000 feet), and horizontal winds in the environment the storm forms in that increase as you go from the ground up and change direction with height, blowing from the equator near the ground and from the west aloft,”
“No place else in the world has the large warm water on its equatorward side with a wide high range of mountains extending from north to south to the west of it,”
“All the other tornado prone regions have at least one feature suboptimal.”
You could say that the US is the perfect storm of features to form Tornadoes.
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