• Question: What causes tornados?

    Asked by grad532army68 to oliviawilliams, jonathanmound, felixsainsburymartinez, Eliza K, dinatheodosiadou on 23 Mar 2026.
    • Photo: Jonathan Mound

      Jonathan Mound answered on 23 Mar 2026:

      I don’t know really know as it is outside my field of study. I know that you need heat from the sun to create strong rising air currents. When that air rises up really high in the atmosphere it can then cool a lot, which means that it will then sink rapidly. There also needs to be strong winds at height. The rising and sinking air, interacts with the strong high-level winds to create the funnel of spinning air that can descend from the storm clouds down to the ground. Exactly how that all pieces together I don’t know.

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