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Tornadoes
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Tornadoes aren't like hurricanes that are born over open waters and can take days to reach land. Tornadoes are spawned from thunderstorms that form when warm humid air meets a mass of cool, dry air. Only one in a hundred thunderstorms produce a tornado. They happen quickly and often stay on the ground for only a few minutes. While Florida gets the most tornados of any state, a strip of land that extends from northeast Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri has more tornadoes than any other place in the U.S. That area is called "Tornado Alley."
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Tornadoes are nature's most violent storms and can leave an area devastated in seconds. A tornado appears as a rotating, funnel-shaped cloud, striking the ground with whirling winds of up to 300 miles per hour or more. A tornado spins like a top and may sound like an airplane or train. Although tornadoes normally travel for less than 10 miles before they subside, 200-mile "tornado tracks" have been reported. Tornadoes can strike at any time of year but occur most frequently during May, June and July in Minnesota.
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Tornadoes can have a wide range of colors, depending on the environment in which they form. Those which form in a dry environment can be nearly invisible, marked only by swirling debris at the base of the funnel. Condensation funnels which pick up little or no debris can be gray to white. While travelling over a body of water as a waterspout, they can turn very white or even blue. Funnels which move slowly, ingesting a lot of debris and dirt, are usually darker, taking on the color of debris. Tornadoes in the Great Plains can turn red because of the reddish tint of the soil, and tornadoes in mountainous areas can travel over snow-covered ground, turning brilliantly white.[17]
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Tornadoes can cause considerable damage to natural and human-made structures on the Earth's surface. Often, they ... cause the injury and death of people. One particular event that set new monetary records in destruction occurred in Oklahoma on May 3, 1999. The destruction from this meteorological event began at 4:45 in the afternoon and ended about six hour later. During this time period, about 70 tornadoes were spawned along a 240-kilometer-long swath that began in southwest Oklahoma.
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Tornadoes can be deadly. With new warning systems, you can be alerted before the tornado is visible. This additional time makes tornado survival more likely. During bad weather, you must be alert and tune in for warnings. If a tornado should strike,well-made plans for emergency shelter can overcome this disaster and bring you, your family and your community through without personal injury.
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Tornadoes of North America and Europe have been studied the most, especially since 1970. In the USA and Europe two tornado wind-speed scales have come into use. There is the international decimal T-Scale which ranges from 0 to 9 and is a simple development of the 200-year old Beaufort wind speed scale, and there is the American F-Scale with its shorter span from 0 to 5. In the severest tornadoes wind speeds have been known to approach 130 meters per second or 300 miles per hour. The strongest known tornadoes for the USA and for Europe are T10 or F5 on these scales. Tornado tracks commonly range from a few dozen to a few hundred meters in diameter but can be up to 5 or more kilometers wide.
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Tornadoes