How do people deal with tornadoes?
464399
Get a weather radio if your town doesn't already have weather warning sirens.  If a Tornado Warning is given, get in the basement of your home or your most internal room without windows.\n\nIf you're in a trailer or car, GET OUT and get yourself in a ditch and hold on.  That train sound isn't a train.
1159760
I live in Kansas and have been thru 6 really bad ones, and many warnings that were uneventful when it comes to the funnels themselves...The sky turns dark..hail occurs and heavy rains then a sudden calm happens just before the funnel touches down to the ground..It does sound loud like a freight train but I just say its a tornado sound now..Debris flies thru the air as well..Once saw a cow lifted and thrown onto a farm building roof..amazing but scary!Not something I like to live thru but have...
501639
Technically yes there must be a storm of some kind... But the tornado isn't usually in the center of a storm usually its on the southwestern corner or side of the storm and it might not even be raining in that part of the storm, making it appear that its not in the storm.\n\nTo have a tornado you need these 2 things....\n\n1. A convective rain shower/thunderstorm\n2. Winds in the upper and middle layers of the atmosphere running Perpendicular to eachother, or the winds in the lower and middle layers. ( basically wind blowing in 2 different directions at different altitudes of the storm, like at the ground the wind be blowing from the west and up about 10,000 feet the wind blowing from the south.)\n\nThats really about it... Those dont really mean that you will get a tornado, it just that those things must be present to create a tornado.
316209
We had a tornado blow through our house in 1987. We called it black friday. Our house was torn and I was just 10 years old at the time. I remember that my parents were both at work and my older siblings and I were playing outside. The air was clear and dead silent. No birds were chirping. All of a sudden there were hail stones as big as golf balls pouring down. We were smart, we went inside. I helped my older siblings gather up the younger ones ( there was 7 of us) and we called my dad. We were told to get to the basement and stay there. We did. Within 30 minutes of that call, the roof of our house was torn off. A day that I am sure none of us will forget. No one was hurt, but there was a lot of damage and debris everywhere.
274665
The definition of a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from the base of a thunderstorm to ground level.  The circulation MUST go all the way to the ground and all the way to the cloud base.  There does not need to be a visible funnel for a tornado to occur.  The visible funnel often is the result of debris or rain being wrapped into the circulation.  This is why tornadoes come in different colors.  A tornado that moves over the red dirt of Oklahoma may take on a red hue, while one that moves over black soil may look black.  There are even "white" tornadoes, which get their tone from moisture being wrapped in.\n\nRadar is useful for determining if a thunderstorm has the necessary circulation in the mid levels to produce a tornado or that a storm COULD produce a tornado, but it can't tell if that circulation is actually on the ground.  Only human eyes can tell that.  As a result, the National Weather Service works with specially trained volunteer weather spotters through a program called SKYWARN.  These spotters are mostly volunteers, most of whom are licensed Amateur Radio operators.  These spotters monitor the storms from the field and radio reports of tornadoes or other hazardous weather to a liaison or directly to the NWS.  Some spotters also "chase" storms.  They watch the weather forecasts and may travel to areas where storms are likely to form.\n\nI'm a SKYWARN weather spotter, and have seen several tornadoes over the years.  It's a real trip to see a tornado form, move and eventually "rope out" and die.  However, it's very dangerous to get close to one (obviously!).  I was just in the right/wrong place at the time...\n\nThe sites I have listed below are ones that I have found useful over the years.  You can even get your own local weather by going to the first link (NWS) on the list and entering in your ZIP or by clicking your area on the map.\n\n*Edited to add another great link (SPC website)
11502
In order for a tornado to form, a number of different things have to happen. The first thing that has to happen is that you have to have two different patches of air moving toward each other from opposite directions, with a warm one on the bottom and a cool one on the top.\n\nThe next thing that happens is that the warm air rises. (You may have learned about hot air rising in school.) After the warm air goes up, the cool air comes down to take its place. So now the warm and cool patches of air are moving side to side and up and down. So they make a spinning patch of air along the ground. This is probably pretty hard to imagine, so check out the picture:\n\nUsually when a tornado is starting, it happens during a storm. So there's lots of air moving around already. If a draft of air from the storm comes along close to the ground and then moves upwards (called an "up-draft"), it will pull the spinning air upwards.\n\nNow comes the part that we don't understand quite as well. So far the spinning air is still really really wide. Somehow it gets pulled in really tight so that it makes a tornado. (Scientists aren't exactly sure why this happens sometimes but not at other times.)
1049502
The best way to view them is on video.\nA waterspout that makes landfall takes on a new name then... tornado.  The water that has been sucked-up into the funnel becomes very unstable at landfall and goes everywhere.  The wind does even more damage.\nSo for that reason, treat a waterspout the same as you would any tornado.
398680
Go to Yahoo or Google and search for Tornado Alley, that is the midwest part of the u.s. where tornados are most prevalent.. hope it helps!!
1169838
Well if you live by cows or horses, stick around and watch. You can use this scale to determine what kind the tornado is.\n\nEverybody knows about the Fujita Scale which measures the power of tornados. But nobody really knows what all those types of twisters do to COWS. So here is the MOOJITA Scale...\n\nM0 Tornado - Cows in an open field are spun around parallel to the wind flow and become mildly annoyed.\nM1 Tornado - Cows are tipped over and can't get up.\nM2 Tornado - Cows begin rolling with the wind.\nM3 Tornado - Cows tumble and bounce.\nM4 Tornado - Cows are AIRBORN.\nM5 Tornado - S T E A K ! ! !
1128213
A tornado is not just wind, the fact that you can see them is either a if it drags condensation down witth them when they form (condensation funnel), or stir up dust and debris when they contact the ground. These "clouds" are actually rapidly spinning vortices (if you dont know it, look it up), that can produce winds in excess of 300 mph on the Fujita Scale (Ditto), and the stuff they can pick up and carry with them..... well, I think that about covers it.
1100204
storm chasers arnt employed.\n\nyou can be your own storm chaser though.\n\nweld some sheet metal and go chase the tornados. ftw!!1!
349724
Anyone who thinks man can control the weather has no concept of the energy involved in a simple thunderstorm not to mention a tornado or hurricane. \n\nBut before you can control the weather, you need to be able to predict it. So when the weather forecasts become accurate, I'll start worrying about the government controlling.
350582
omg I hear the sirens monitor!! This is scary stuff. Get your pants on. You don't wanna be caught in this tornado with your pants down!! \n\nSeriously guys.......this is spooky scary!! Bang on the girl's apartment three doors down. I hear she has a roach motel!
608754
I love to watch them on tv. I love a thunderstorm near my house. Never been in a tornado or hurricane but they look really scary on tv. I think I would be very scared if I had to go thru a tornado of hurricane. We had a tropical storm one time with winds up to 70 mph. It was awful and lasted all night. I was so worried about the trees crashing on my house. They didn't but the ones in the far back fell. The house shook.
466630
try this site http://www.howstuffworks.com/tornado.htm
881749
Earthquake any day!  I used to live in California - they are not so bad but Tornados scare the bejesus out me!
636472
I live in tornado alley and used to live in a mobile home it was just less expensive at the time.  I now own a home but you know I hear of more houses getting hit by tornadoes than trailers.  I guess you just take out insurance and hope for the best.