What other countries besides the U.S. have tornados?
356933
India is a very common place where tornadoes occur.\n\nOther ones include China, most middle-eastern countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan), and northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Chad)\n\nIn general most places around 10-20 degrees above the equator.
517589
Yes, we have floods, but I can't think of any tornadoes of any significance, ever. We also have earthquakes.
401694
Any of the states in the region of the country referred to as Tornado Alley.\n\nThe site of most tornadoes a year aren't actually in Kansas, but in Texas and, in some years, Oklahoma...
847338
i read in a tornado book that i bought, tornado alley in the U.S. gets the most tornadoes in the whole world.  Conditions are just right for it here.  There is nowhere else that tornadoes are common, but tornadoes can happen anywhere
362562
Well, to avoid tsunamis and typhoons/hurricanes you need to be in a landlocked country. To avoid tornadoes you need something fairly mountainous. As for earthquakes, you need to avoid fault lines. I would guess somewhere in Germany or thereabouts.
263218
I agree. The central portion of the United States is prone to violent outbreaks of tornadoes more often than other parts of the country because of its location.\n\nThe maritime tropical air masses of the Gulf of Mexico bring warm moist air up into the central states while continental polar (cold & dry) air moves down south from Canada.\n\nThe mixture of these two air masses is the perfect ingredient for the formation of violent thunderstorms & mesocyclones.\n\nThe Ohio valley is just one area where tornadoes are more frequent.\n\nTornado Ally includes but is not limited to the following states: Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, & Iowa.\n\nOklahoma has the most tornadoes in the United States per year.\n\nFlorida also has a high incident of violent thunderstorms & tornadoes. This is also because of location. Florida is a peninsula. It is surrounded by water on all sides but one. Where the warm moist air converges from both the Atlantic & Gulf is where you will have the most violent of the storms. This would be central Florida.\n\nFYI: Florida also has the most lightning strikes per year.\n\nTo answer your question directly, it is the location of Ohio in relation to the air masses that that converge over the state. Other places in the world are not so fortunate or unfortunate as it would seem to have the right mix of ingredients. The United States has more tornadoes than any other nation in the world!
857716
north america, south america, europe, africa, and antarctica
1005973
When I was a student pilot, my flight instructor and I were flying from McAllen, TX back to Harlingen,TX. We spotted a small tornado below and to the right of us about five miles. We watched it for several minutes and reported it to the Flight Service Station in the area. It even made the news that night. That was in 1967.
489549
Because the US doesn't have monsoons.  Apparently various severe tropical storms get special names depending on the ocean of origin.  Hurricanes originate from the Atlantic.  America (US, Carribean, and Mexico especially) get hurricanes in particular because God is angry with them... Just kidding!  Particular areas get hit because of the flow of the Gulf Stream moving from Africa to the Carribean is apparently capable of building up a great deal of force!  Think warm, moist wind building up steam with no trees or other geographical feature getting in the way, all the while collecting moisture... Then slamming that into the islands and mainland...  Nasty stuff that...
191141
Most... United States of America...\n\nLeast... China...
143148
The US gets something like 90+% of all the world's hurricanes because the warm air of the Gulf Coast can interact directly with the cold air coming down from the arctic, with no mountains in between. If you look at a map, that is the only place that is true on earth. This causes tornadoes. \n\nIt rains and snows near mountains and islands in the ocean. This is called an orographic effect. Areas behind the mountains are often very dry. This creates deserts in the rain shadows of these mountains. \n\nAntarctica is a high plateau and a large continent. The distance from the ocean and the altitude make it the coldest place on earth. \n\nOften cold air comes over the Great lakes, and creates fingers of snow as the air moves east. This is called Lake Effect snow. \n\nChinooks and Santa Anas are examples of foehn winds, caused by air travelling down the lee side of a mountain and being compressed under a temperature inversion and warming up. These warm dry winds are also called katabatic winds.\n\nThe warm Gulf stream and warm Kurishiro currents on the western side of the Atlantic and Pacific respectively keep the land nearby warmer than it would be otherwise. These currents are western boundary currents of ocean gyres produced by the coriolis force in the Atlantic and Pacific ocean basins. \n\nTropical cyclones are also produced by coriolis force, and pick up energy from warm ocean waters that result from the world ocean current system. Of course, the topography of the oceans produces this world ocean current system, so topography is responsible for the tropical cyclones, including the hurricanes we are confronted with in the US.
916852
United States, UK and Germany.
24870
Per square mile, Oklahoma has the most tornadoes of all US states.
998013
It is Florida for the United States, at more than 100 days of Thunderstorms per year.  As far as the world is concerned, I'm not sure...but I think Florida is still up there.
466630
try this site http://www.howstuffworks.com/tornado.htm
1102714
yes.\n\nAt least the great majority of tornadoes rotate counterclockwise \n(as do all low-pressure systems) in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in \nthe southern hemisphere, for the reason (coriolis force) given by Eric \nPeterson in response #1.  But occasionally, it would seem, northern hemisphere \ntornadoes do rotate clockwise:  S. Flora's book "Tornadoes of the United \nStates" cites an 1890 article in the American Meteorological Journal.  Its \nauthor, a J.P. Finley, states that, of 550 American tornadoes he studied, 29 \nwere deemed to have rotated clockwise.  I have not been able to find any \n"modern" study of this question.  But I believe it could be true. The region \nof swirling air that contracts to become the tornado is not itself large \nenough in extent to have its rotation dictated by the coriolis force; rather, \nit "inherits" this tendency from the great masses of air whose movement sets \nthe stage for the storms and any associated tornadoes. If the study cited is \ncorrect and representative, on occasion the direction of rotation is set by \nsome other factor, perhaps the topography in the area where the tornado forms, \nfor example.
447138
The U.S. is definitely the tornado capital of the world.\n\nhttp://www.usatoday.com/weather/tg/wtorwhat/wtorwhat.htm