Tornadoes In The United States

Nature is at once worthy of awe and fear. Each day, natural forces impact people around the globe, usually in a relatively harmless way. However, natural events can quickly become disasters in the right conditions, as is the case with tornadoes and hurricanes. In the middle of the United States, “Tornado Alley” stretches roughly from Texas to upper South Dakota. This coincides with the Great Plains—an area of flat, open land that practically bisects the continental United States. Here, conditions are far more likely to produce massive storms each year. From the north, cold, dry air meets warm, moist air, and violent thermal updrafts have the potential to produce tornadoes; tornadoes are most common in April, May, June, and July (Abbott, 2012). However, tornadoes are not limited to Tornado Alley—in fact, they occur in every state in America, though the vast majority happens in the Great Plains (“U.S.,” n.d.). Tornadoes are categorized by their wind speed and damage, and can range from relatively small in width to several miles across. The largest tornado ever recorded (2.6 miles across) occurred on 31 May 2013, in El Reno, Oklahoma, while the tornado with the highest wind speeds (more than 300 mph) devastated Moore, Oklahoma, on 3 May …show more content…
They begin as tropical depressions; when surface-wind speeds exceed 39 mph, they become tropical storms (Abbott, 2012). Once wind speeds reach 74 mph, the tropical storm becomes a hurricane. At this point, a distinctive “eye” forms in the middle of the storm. However, hurricanes are not uniform—rather, each hurricane is a collection of individual storms. Hurricane season runs from June to November, but most occur between August and October (“Hurricanes,” 2013). Each hurricane is ranked on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane damage Potential scale, from a Category 1 to a Category 5; those Category 3 and larger are called major hurricanes (Abbott,