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
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.
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