Why Are There No Tornadoes In Europe? | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by brilliant a few months back i did a video on super volcanoes and how there's actually several of them around the world that could really mess things up if they decide to go boom luckily they don't go boom that often but when they do go boom they're most likely to go boom right here in north america because yeah for some reason like half of the acto super volcanoes that we know of are here in north america what's that about it might be because of the way the pacific plate is subducting underneath the north american plate it might just be a convergence of large igneous masses underneath the plate maybe it's just bad luck or maybe planet earth just has it out for us the last option is probably unlikely because we're so small and the earth is so not a conscious thing but if there was something that the earth had out for us super volcanoes probably wouldn't be the best proof of that because like i said before they don't go boom that often but something that does happen often like hundreds of times a year actually is tornadoes they too are a destructive force and they too happen a lot more often in north america and not by a little bit either like a lot more often so yeah what's that about [Music] growing up in texas tornadoes are just a part of life we had tornado drills in school the local weather guy's a friggin hero and we all know the panic that goes off in your chest when you hear that tornado siren go off and we all grew up hearing stories about the big one where i grew up the big one was terrible tuesday also known as the red river valley tornado outbreak this was a storm system that formed on april 10 1979 that spawned 59 tornadoes over the next two days including two f-4 tornadoes one of which cut a mile and a half wide swath through the center of wichita falls texas that killed 42 people and caused 400 million dollars in damage this event left a giant scar on that psyche of that whole area for decades growing up around there you always knew that nature was in control and that every storm had the potential to go sideways and ruin your life and if you grew up in texas or the midwest you probably grew up with your own big one story that scared the bejesus out of you i actually think it's really funny when texans say that they don't want to go to california because of the earthquakes and i'm like uh okay but here the sky can eat your house anyway i kind of realized at one point that all the major tornadoes that i'd ever heard of were here in the united states like i've never heard of a tornado in europe my entire life and yeah any european friends that i know you know i would say something about and they'd just kind of be like yeah i mean i guess it happens sometimes like it happens but it's not like a part of their lives so that's kind of what led to this video you know what is it about the united states that seems to just attract tornadoes like sailors to your mom turns out it's all about geography and to be clear there are tornadoes all around the world they just seem to happen a lot more often here and they're much stronger here in the u.s it is a very specific to the united states kind of problem so put on your ruby slippers and click them three times as we get caught up in a whirlwind of tornado knowledge but first we have to understand how tornadoes form and what conditions make them possible every tornado is different but generally there are some common factors that lead to them forming these include abundant low level moisture which contributes to thunderstorm development and a trigger such as a cold front or low-level zone of converging winds to help lift the moist air up and this rising moist air can create spinning vortices at the back of the updraft and from there it does get a little tricky so i enlisted the help of hank shima also known as pecos hank here on youtube he's a tornado chaser and a photographer who's been studying tornadoes for years and he explained it like this basically these vortices get strengthened by the rising and falling of hot and cold air and as it speeds up it's drawn inward towards its axis of rotation the conservation of angular momentum which sounds like a big word but it's a really simple idea and the classic uh example that we use is the ice skater when her hands are out her her radius her diameter is wider okay so she spins slowly but her mass is exactly the same but when she brings her arms in her radius gets smaller and so the the velocity of the vorticity goes up so as it gets tighter and tighter and tighter it gets faster and faster and faster and then the supercells are able to tilt that horizontal into the vertical so that it just kind of amplifies and sucks it right up and if this funnel cloud touches the ground it's officially a tornado and while most tornadoes form from supercell thunderstorms not all supercells produce them for example if the spinning air near the ground is cold they'll just kind of spread away from the storm along the ground like a figure skater with their arms held out and then no tornado can form but even if a tornado does form they come in all shapes and sizes and eventually we needed a way to sort of measure them and classify them into the fujita scale dr tatsuya theodore fujita at the university of chicago developed a scale with alan pearson from the national severe storms forecast center in 1971 to help measure a tornado's wind speeds and damage it might leave behind but the fujita scale or f scale was very limited it was mostly about how much damage the storm inflicted but it lacked three things one no account for construction quality and variability two no definitive correlation between damage and wind speed and three a lack of damage indicators so a group of meteorologists and wind engineers got together in 2007 and came up with a new scale the enhanced fujita scale it has 28 damage indicators like building types structures and trees and each damage indicator has eight degrees of damage from barely visible damage to complete destruction and they change the wind speed ranges for example an ef-3 tornado that would be an enhanced fujita scale tornado would be between 218 and 266 kilometers an hour a traditional f3 tornado would have been between 254 and 322 kilometers an hour the ef scale ranges from ef-0 which is light damage to ef5 which is incredible damage and by the way all ef-5 tornadoes to date have been in the united states with one exception which i'll get to in a minute but that brings us back to the original question why here why does the sky have it out for north america i mean there's an area in the flat plains of the midwest that's actually called tornado alley you know it's the alley where the tornadoes hang out and smoke cigarettes well remember how i said that the updraft of warm air into a supercell and then the downdraft of cool air sort of create vortices in the clouds that eventually spiral into tornadoes well right here in the heartland there's geologically nothing between here and the tundra up in canada so you get cold air coming down from that direction and from below you have moist warm air coming up from the gulf of mexico it's just this perfect spot with mountain ranges on both sides funneling warm and cold air together on a flat plain mixing it up swirling it up and causing a rumble but interestingly tornado alley seems to be shifting don't get me wrong oklahoma and texas are so where you want to be if you want to get impaled by a road sign but there seems to be an interesting trend toward moving towards the southern states according to victor jenseni an associate professor at the department of geographic and atmospheric science at northern illinois university quote basically over the last 50 years if you live in a place like dallas your chance of a tornado there has gradually gone down but if you're in a place like birmingham alabama or memphis tennessee your threat has gone way up now part of that could just be chalked up to better reporting than we used to have but it's also possible that rising temperatures in the gulf of mexico is causing weather patterns to shift and while it might be too soon to blame climate change for this there are some climate models that predicted this back in the day and they also predicted that they'd start forming earlier and later in the year than they used to but yeah this particular geography is why according to the storm prediction center the us has around 1200 tornadoes each year in europe it's more like 200 to 400 tornadoes every year with greece and italy getting the most of them they both have dry air coming down over the mountains and then mixing with warm moist air coming up from the mediterranean then there's the uk they see between 30 and 50 tornadoes each year which interestingly is more tornadoes across an average land area than anywhere else in the world but they're very small south america gets its fair share of tornadoes in fact they've got their own tornado alley that stretches across parts of argentina brazil paraguay and uruguay once again it's flat land between mountains and sea where air masses meet and last but not least is bangladesh sandwiched between the bay of bengal and the himalayan mountains remember earlier when i said that all f5 tornadoes that have been recorded happen here in the united states with one big exception well that exception just happened to be the deadliest tornado of all time and it happened here it's called the dullet poor satiria tornado and it took place on april 26 1989. it was a massive f5 tornado that tore through a densely populated area and killed 1300 people more than twice as much as the second deadliest tornado that was the infamous tri-state tornado from march 18 1925 that went 219 miles across illinois indiana and missouri making it the longest in world history it killed 695 people injured more than 2 000 and 15 000 homes were destroyed tornadoes have occurred in the middle east but that's rare big countries like australia china and russia have more land for tornadoes to touch down and they also have some areas like our midwest here in the u.s where tornadoes happen more often now you might have heard the tornadoes rotate in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere that sounds like an old wives tale but it's actually true generally tornadoes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere though not always sometimes they do spin in the opposite direction those are called anti-cyclonic tornadoes so yes tornadoes do happen all over the world but what about other worlds like we've seen dust devils on mars which are kind of like the desert tornadoes that we have here on earth but with only one percent of the atmosphere so they don't pack a lot of punch but jupiter that is just covered with storms and swirling eddies that might qualify as a tornado to our definition then of course there's the big red eye on jupiter which is more like a hurricane here on earth it measures around 16 000 kilometers across it does seem to be shrinking though but still easily the biggest cyclonic storm in the solar system saturn also has massive storms that extend more than 300 000 kilometers and wrap around almost the entire planet and then there's that strange permanent hexagon of clouds at the poles of saturn so hexagonal tornado speaking of dust tornadoes there are also fire tornadoes and water spouts air fire water fire tornadoes or fire whirls to be more accurate often occur during large-scale wildfires they're not true tornadoes though they're just kind of vortices that suck up combustible materials and gases now water spouts are basically the same as land-based tornadoes except over the water and they can suck up fish frogs and other small marine life out of the water and carry them up into the cloud where it will then rain them over other places later on this actually just happened recently in texarkana when residents notice a bunch of small fish in their yards and streets after a storm strange events and tall tales emerge after tornadoes pass through some of these include a house that was destroyed but a cake on the counter was left unmoved along with a stack of dishes in the cupboard over the sink a house that was picked up and placed in the middle of the street photographs that were carried more than 100 miles and pieces of straw that get embedded into tree trunks but let's just say you do get caught in a tornado there's a few things that you need to do to stay safe so first of all a tornado watch and a tornado warning those are different things a tornado watch means that a tornado is possible that there's a storm that has the right kind of conditions for a tornado a tornado warning means that they've identified that rotational motion so a tornado is already happening or is about to occur and this is when you need to get to a safe place immediately now the worst thing you can do is to get in your car and try to outrun the tornado or something you will not outrun it it will beat you and it will toss your car around like it's nothing the best thing you can do is to find a safe spot in your home if you have a basement or storm cellar obviously that's the best option if you don't have that you want to find an interior room with no windows preferably one on the lowest floor if you can quickly find a mattress to cover yourself that can actually help against flying debris if you're in a high-rise building find a hallway in the building center on the lowest floor you can get to and if you're in a mobile home go literally anywhere else find a nearby sturdy building if there's one nearby or even a culvert and just get as low to the ground as possible mobile homes are like the worst possible place to be in a tornado most importantly if you live in tornado alley make a plan be ready for when the time comes because you won't have time to make a plan when it happens and if you need a little motivation for that just listen to this story from this lady who survived the 1979 terrible tuesday tornado suddenly the wind was not a wind anymore it was a very solid force i heard the sound of my voice as the air was pulled from my lungs the sensations were of being pounded and hit and stabbed it was violent it was very very violent injuries were severe all four limbs were severely injured my left leg was off just below the knee my right arm was torn from elbow to wrist my left arm was broken and my right leg was both uh broken in several places and lacerated to the bone from knee to ankle so yeah stay safe out there but i'll put this to you guys if any of you actually survived a tornado do you have any crazy tornado stories to share let's hear them in the comments big thanks to pecos hank for contributing to this video i do have a full interview with him coming out on the podcast soon where he tells all kinds of stories from his storm chasing days it's it's pretty wild but uh if you haven't checked out the podcast yet just look for conversations with joe and your favorite podcast player i'll put the links down below so yeah as somebody who lives in tornado alley one of the things that's so scary about them is that they just they're they're totally random like you never know what they're going to do so it kind of feels like your fate has just left up to chance so maybe the best way to understand tornadoes is to understand probability which you can learn by taking the probability fundamentals course i'm brilliant through 22 interactive quizzes covering 110 concepts and exercises you can get a better handle on randomness which is kind of the force that guides our entire lives you can learn concepts like rule of sum rule of produce expected value even learn some roulette strategies then you can go clean up at the casino pace for itself don't gamble kids and if probability is a bit too much of a jump for you you can start off with a mathematical fundamentals course and work your way forward that's what's so great about brilliant you can start at whatever level you're comfortable with and they'll teach you the building blocks that make more advanced stuff more achievable and it does it by solving problems with visual and interactive puzzles basically hacking your brains innate problem solving ability to smartify you in ways you never thought before by the way it's a great gift for kids who might be struggling to learn the traditional school setting or if you're an adult and you just always wish you had a better handle on this kind of stuff here's your chance it's never too late so if you've been on the fence about brilliant you can try the first few lessons of any of the courses for free at brilliant.org answers with joe and if you like it you want to know more you can sign up for the premium subscription and get 20 off this does only apply for the first 200 people who sign up though so don't delay daddy so once 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your first time here google thinks you might like this one so you might go check that out or any of the others down the side that have my face on them go take a look if you enjoy them i invite you to subscribe because i come back with videos every monday anyway that's it for now you guys go out there have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe especially if there's a tornado around and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 856,567

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: CoqNpydOJq4

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022