TORNADO ALLEY. ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS AREAS IN THE WORLD.

A tornado in Oklahoma

We are sure you have seen images of some horrific and devastating tornadoes either on TV or in movies. Don´t worry! They are usually images which come from the United States, and more particularly from a specific area corresponding to the plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalacchian Mountains where this atmospheric phenomenon is more frequent. This area is called Tornado Alley.



A diagram of Tornado Alley ´s rough location (red) and its contributing weather systems

 

Tornadoes or twisters are violently rotating columns of air that are in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud. although it´s not the normal thing, the most extreme tornadoes can reach wind speeds of more than 483 km/h and stretch about 3 kms across.

Though no state is entirely free of tornadoes, we can say that Texas is the state which reports the biggest number (they had 8.049 between 1950 and 2009). Kansas and Oklahoma were second and third respectively.

Tornado activity in the United States

 

 

 

Tornadoes can happen at any time of the year but they most often occur in spring and early summer. They usually leave chaos and destruction behind them. As recently as April 2011 a tornado outbreak which went through the Tornado alley caused 358 deaths. The number of victims is astonishing even though it is far from that of the deadliest American tornado, the so-called Tri-State (Missouri, Illinois and Indiana) which caused 695 deaths on March 18, 1925.




A sequence of images showing the birth of a tornado
 

We show you now two breathtaking videos about tornadoes. The first one is from one of the main tornadoes research projects existing in America and the second one was recorded inside a tornado occurring in Aurora, Nebraska. They are really startling. Aren´t they?