Like, I’ve never heard of a powerful tornado in, say, the UK, Mexico, Japan, or Australia. Most of the textbook tornadoes seem to happen in areas like Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. By why is this the case? Why do more countries around the world not experience these kinds of storms?
In: Planetary Science
Tornadoes require a very specific layering of air in order to form, especially for large ones.
This is:
Warm and humid air close to the ground.
Warm and dry air above that
Cold and dry air above that
The warm and dry layer stops the humid layer from mixing with the cold layer, preventing them from meeting in a typical front. Instead they’re layered on top of each other with all this energy stored up until something disturbs it enough for the humid and cold layers to interact, resulting in a very rapid release of energy in the form of a tornado.
To get this layering you need three sources of air.
Somewhere warm and humid (eg the Gulf of Mexico, that brings warm and humid air up into the U.S. Midwest.
Somewhere warm and dry. Eg the U.S. southwest, an arid/desert environment that feeds warm and dry air into the same region of the U.S. Midwest.
A mountain range that can kick a layer of air up to cool it down and have it slot in above the two warm layers. Such as the mountains down the western U.S, where prevailing winds constantly send air over them and into the Midwest.
There aren’t many other places with this sort of geography, so rarely get conditions that can form tornadoes, especially big ones.
It takes very specific conditions to get a powerful tornado. You need flat land with a strong current of cold air meeting a strong current of warm air.
There’s a stretch of the USA that is close to the Gulf of Mexico’s warm air currents and the Canadian Arctic currents. That entire stretch, between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains, is completely flat.
These are the conditions for really powerful tornadoes because there’s nothing to break the storm or redirect the airflows.
Tornadoes require specific weather patterns, and that tends to require certain latitudes, which don’t include the places you listed. You also need flat land in huge quantities and a rich source of warm moisture like the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a relatively unusual combination of geography that causes the “Tornado Alley” pattern.
Because those areas have the right conditions. Cold air coming down from the Rockies mixes with warm, humid air moving up from the Gulf of Mexico. They meet on the flat land in between. That’s an ideal situation for large tornadoes.
The UK actually has the more tornados per square kilometre than the USA but are rarely significant enough to cause issues.
because we drive on the right side of the road. The vortex when cars pass in this orientation combined with the directional spin of the earth create countless mini vortexes that under the right weather conditions are pulled together to create tornadoes.
I remember being told some horseshit along these lines back in grade school. Its fun to argue this as if I actually believe it.
It’s because other countries have roundabouts and that helps reverse the tornados before they occur. Neat!
Canada has them as well.
And as of 5-7 years ago they’ve gotten worse.
Ottawa now has multiple tornado warnings every summer , and we’ve have 2 in the last couple years that hit around the city.
That was when I bought a generator.
The US has the advantage of a lot of space and a lot of people (so they get observed).
Per area, the UK has the most tornedos in the world.
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