What are Tornadoes? Video Lecture | Class 7 Oxford Science: Chapter Notes, Worksheets & Tests

the weather is a funny thing one day it
can be sunny and warm perfect day for
sunglasses and flip-flops but the next
day it can be cold and rainy most of the
time the weather doesn't give us
anything that we can't handle with maybe
some sunscreen or an umbrella or a snow
shovel but sometimes and in some places
there can be extreme weather like big
thunderstorms or hurricanes or snow
storms and one of the most powerful
kinds of extreme weather out there it's
a type of a storm that scientists pay
close attention to tornadoes a tornado
is a fast-spinning column of air that
stretches all the way from a
thunderstorm cloud in the sky down to
the Earth's surface
because tornadoes turn and twist as they
move they're sometimes called twisters
they form inside really big
thunderstorms when cold dry air moving
from one direction bumps into warm wet
air coming from a different direction
because the cold air is heavier it
slides down under the warm air and
pushes it up really fast all this
fast-moving air rushing up and down can
create a sort of spinning thunderstorm
and it can eventually keep going to form
a tornado and when a tornado forms it
can be one of the most powerful forces
in nature tornado winds are the
strongest in the world
even stronger than hurricanes in some
twisters we know that the wind can blow
to almost 500 kilometres an hour
strong enough to lift heavy things like
cars and trucks into the air and they're
loud to people who have seen them or
even been in them say they sound like
giant roaring trains but they don't move
as fast as a speeding train usually
tornadoes travel across the land at
about 50 kilometres an hour slower than
most cars go now weather can be really
unpredictable which means that you just
can't predict or know what's going to
happen before it happens and that's
especially true for tornadoes these
windy storms can speed up slow down
change direction or even standstill and
they can last anywhere from a few
seconds to as long as an hour while
tornadoes can happen all over the world
they're most common in the United States
about two-thirds of all the tornadoes in
the world happen right
in the middle of the country from the
Dakotas down to Texas especially in the
late spring and early summer because
tornadoes are so powerful and so
unpredictable meteorologists spent a lot
of time studying them they want to
understand more about exactly how and
when tornadoes can form and hopefully
predict when they'll show up there are
even people called storm chasers who
follow big storms around the middle of
the u.s. hoping to spot one and it turns
into a tornado so we can get a better
picture of what really happens when a
twister forms scientists still don't
know for sure when a tornado is going to
happen but they have gotten better at
predicting which thunderstorms might be
strong enough to create one and if they
spot a bad looking storm early enough
then they can give people who live
nearby a warning that a twister might be
coming that's one of the most important
jobs that a meteorologist has helping
people get ready for extreme weather so
the more they learn about tornadoes the
better we can prepare for them and the
more they can help us understand how our
weather works even when it's not so
extreme I hope the weather is nice where
you are and if you have any questions
for any of us here at the fort about
weather animals space or anything just
let us know by leaving a comment or
emailing us at kids at the scishow comm
thanks for joining us and see you next
time
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