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How funnels form, what drives tornado activity, and what scientists are doing to better understand them--our collection of articles, video and podcasts explain the basics
April 18, 2011 |
SciAm Exclusives Video
Storm-chasing scientists with the VORTEX2 two-year field experiment explain what they know and what they don't know about how and why tornadoes form.
Ask the Experts
Advances in computer modeling and other technologies still cannot overcome the fundamental complexity of thunderstorm and subsequent tornado formation
AccuWeather
Here is a list of facts about tornadoes, offering a quick reference of tornado records and stats
Hang on Dorothy, you may be in for a rough ride when trying to predict cyclones by the color of the sky
Tornado season was nearly a dud in 2009 for an armada of scientists who hoped to surround a twister with data-collecting instruments. Some better luck happened in 2010
Could global warming make this a more frequent occurrence?
This summer, more than 100 researchers spent five weeks hunting down tornadoes, in the largest study of its kind. But it was an unusually quiet year for twisters. A data set collected from a June 5 twister in Wyoming helped to stave off disappointmen
Unmanned aerial vehicles hold great potential in their ability to provide crucial data about tornado behavior--if only the FAA allowed scientists to use them
Jacqui Wilmshurst, a PhD psychology student at the University of Sheffield, is spending summer in the field studying human reactions to severe weather and tornadoes. In this special longer-than-usual episode, she shares her initial findings. Christie Nicholson reports
A psychology PhD student from the University of Sheffield shares her initial observations on how well local people understand the behavior of tornadoes. Christie Nicholson reports
In VORTEX2, the largest scientific study of tornadoes, scientists are trying to understand just what causes a twister to form. It's more complicated than you might think. Christie Nicholson reports
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