Tornadoes
Tornadoes (or twisters) are vertical funnels of rapidly spinning air. Their winds may top 250 miles (400 kilometers) an hour and can clear-cut a pathway a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide and 50 miles (80 kilometers) long. Twisters are born in thunderstorms and are often accompanied by hail. Giant, persistent thunderstorms called supercells spawn the most destructive twisters. A change in wind direction accompanied by an increase in wind speed with increasing height begins a rotation pattern, with a horizontal spinning effect in the lower atmosphere; thus begins a thunderstorm which develops in warm moist air in advance of an eastward moving cold front. Rising air within the storm tilts the rotating air from horizontal to vertical. A wide area of rotation now extends through the storm; this is where twisters sometimes form. These storms are seen all over the world and in all of the states. The United States has about a thousand of these storms every year. "Tornado Alley," a region that includes eastern South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, northern Texas, and eastern Colorado, is home to the most powerful and destructive of these storms. U.S. twisters cause 80 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries per year.In the southern states most of these storms occur from March through May, while in the north the peak season is the summer. The vast majority of these storms are either feeble or do damage that can only be attributed to a weak twister. Only a small percentage of these storms can be correctly classed as violent. Such a distinction became possible only after the acceptance of the Fujita Scale as the official classification system for twister damage This page has been adapted from the “A Preparedness Guide” published by U.S DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , National Weather Service (NWS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Red Cross. A twister near Anadarko, Oklahoma. The twister itself is the thin tube reaching from the cloud to the ground. The lower part of this twister is surrounded by a translucent dust cloud, kicked up by the tornado's strong winds at the surface. 
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