What is a tornado like?

Tornado is a terrible storm, its trajectory is elusive and it comes and goes in a hurry.

Tornadoes can be divided into waterspouts, land tornadoes, dust tornadoes and fire tornado, among which waterspouts are the most fierce, but land tornadoes and fire tornado are also very harmful.

The place where waterspouts appear most in the world is along the Gulf Coast of the United States, especially in the waters south of Florida Peninsula. During the 45-minute flight in the air, a pilot witnessed nine tornadoes on a cumulonimbus belt in this area and saw five or six waterspouts coexisting in the air.

Tornadoes have a strange appearance. Its upper part is black or thick gray cumulonimbus clouds, and its lower part is a funnel-shaped cloud column hanging like an elephant's nose. It's small, fast, fierce and short. The diameter of waterspout is 25 ~ 100 m, and the diameter of lulongjuan is 100 ~ 1000 m. Scientists have not directly measured the wind speed, but according to the work done by tornadoes in the area where they pass, the wind speed is generally 50 ~ 100 meters per second, and sometimes it can reach 300 meters per second, which exceeds the speed of sound. It's like a giant vacuum cleaner. After crossing the ground, everything on the ground will be swept away by it. After passing through reservoirs and rivers, the water column often rolls up into the sky, and sometimes even exposes the bottom of reservoirs and rivers. At the same time, tornadoes are short-lived, often only need a few minutes or dozens of minutes, at most a few hours, and move tens of meters to 10 km, and then "die out".

How do tornadoes form? Tornadoes mostly occur in mainland coastal areas and islands, mainly because the surface is unevenly heated under strong sunlight, causing strong convection in the air. If the rising air contains more water vapor, it will often develop into a strong thunderstorm cloud at high altitude. The temperature difference between the top and bottom of this cloud is very large, the bottom of the cloud is less than 10℃, and the top of the cloud is above -30℃. Therefore, in the thunderstorm cloud, the cold air drops rapidly, the hot air rises violently, and the upper and lower air are alternately disturbed, forming many small vortices, which gradually rotate and expand, and finally form a funnel-shaped tornado with rapid rotation. If there is a low pressure area on the ground, the surrounding air will rise, adding power to the tornado, and it will become more powerful.

Tornadoes are powerful, and the following "miracles" are all masterpieces of tornadoes.

This strange thing happened in Oklahoma, USA. Two horses are pulling a cart, and the driver is sitting in it. He fell asleep because of the sultry weather. A loud noise woke him from his lethargy. He wiped his eyes with his hand and looked intently: two horses and a shaft had disappeared without a trace. Look at the rest of the car, but it's all right. If we hadn't lost the horse and the axle, we'd pretend that nothing had happened.

There is a similar situation in Nebraska, USA. A peasant woman is milking a cow, thinking about other things. Just then, with a loud noise, all the cows and cowsheds disappeared. She couldn't figure out what was going on, so she still sat on the stool and stared at the milk pail at her feet, until the neighbor heard the sound and woke her up.

A couple in Oklahoma suffered the same fate. 1950 On a sunny summer day, they lay in bed and rested. A harsh voice drove away the sleeping God. Both of them got up and looked at it, thinking it was a voice they heard in a dream, so they lay down again. At this time, they suddenly found that their bed was taken to a barren wilderness. There is no house, no building, no livestock around, only a chair is left beside it, and the folded clothes are still on it. Everything in front of them stunned them!

The supersonic tornado seems to be a magician, and its performance is even more surprising. 1896 There was a tornado in St. Louis, USA, which made a pine branch easily penetrate a steel plate about 1 cm thick. 19 19, a tornado occurred in Minnesota, USA, causing a thin grass stem to pierce a thick wooden board, while a clover leaf was deeply embedded in the mud wall like mold.