THE WINDS OF DESTRUCTION:TORNADO VS.TROPICAL CYCLONE.

ANGRY ATMOSPHERIC SYSTEMS AND STORMS THAT BRING TOTAL DEMOLITION

 

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person that walked in.That’s what the storm is all about.”

-Haruki Murakami-

 

     The storms have magical meaning, not just in different cultures and poetic  literature but also for science and scientists. They come and go but the world is never the same after. They bring chaos, blood, tears, despair, destruction and death but they also leave us in new beginning and hope that we will possible learn something, change anything and stop nothing in the future ahead us. Those atmospheric attacks are the greatest sign that we failed to understand nature and that we will never be actually on that level to link indicators with the consequences and to make changes in the meantime, before the punishment is there.

     When i was a child, I was amazed with the children’s novel “The Wizard of Oz”, written by author L.Frank Baum,  that has followed the interesting adventures of the farm girl Dorothy in the Land of Oz, where she was stuck after the tornado has picked up her and her dog Toto from Kansas.  Wow!I was 10 years old and I was dreaming to be swept away by a whirlwinds, twisters or cyclones. I think I really believed that those strong winds are the whispers of hidden magical lands where children could go and like a Peter Pan, never grow up. At the time when I was capable to understand the real  structure of the storms, I was fascinated with the strength of nature and I forgot that beautiful Land of Oz.

     But, the question is :what is a cyclone and if tornado is a cyclone or we can’t compare it with other cyclones? I witnessed the situations that many people can’t tell a difference among tornado, hurricane or a  typhoon because the storms of each of them are deadly. For people, the aggressive winds are always the same but their skeleton and their background is different and worth of understanding. Especially in the age of ignorant media and their lack of interest to define the terms they are pretending they understand.

     First of all, I would like to emphasise that according to NASA, tornadoes and hurricanes may be appear to be very similar in their general structure because the both are extremely strong horizontal winds:“…swirling around the center, strong upward motion dominating the circulation with some downward motion in the center. The tangential winds far exceed the radial inflow or the vertical motion, and can cause much damage. Hurricanes always rotate counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere (clockwise in the southern), the direction of their rotation being determined by the Earth’s rotation. This is almost always true of tornadoes too, although on rare occasions ‘anticyclonic’ tornadoes spinning in the opposite direction do occur (tornadic circulation is determined by the local winds). This is where the similarities end.” Then we come to the most obvious difference between those two, the different scales and the different impact on the environment. Tornadoes have small-scale circulations and that lead them up to 1.5 miles. We can understand a tornado as a cocktail of many thunderstorms that usually develop themselves in the high and severe wind, during spring and early summer.The negative side of this “wind association” starts when there is a clash between moist warm air from the  Mexican Gulf and the cold dry land air from the northwest. The forms of tornadoes could occur everywhere around the globe, more or less similar to those what we have  always  seen in the U.S.  On the other side, the hurricanes are supported by some kind of tornadoes, they have large-scale circulations with horizontal dimensions from 60 to well over 1000 miles in diameter. Just for understanding, tornadoes can cause the chaos on the targeted ground but they are limited in their demolition because they travel short distance and their lifetime is short, from a few seconds to a few hours ( tornadic wind speeds have been estimated at 100 to more than 300 mph) which is nothing when we take a look on the hurricanes that could travel long distances, taking energy from the water surface of warm waters or tropical oceans. The researchers said it must be above 26.5° C, or about 76° F so they could be able to form their powerful attacks. Sometimes, they last for days or weeks and the damage they make is beyond imaginable. Tornadoes come from the land, the hurricanes come from the oceans.

     The next important thing to have in mind is a fact that tornadoes are spotted all over the globe but the most affected area is US Midwest with the record of 1.200 tornadoes per year. The hurricane are mostly happening  on the North Atlantic Ocean, the Northeast Pacific Ocean or the South Pacific Ocean east of 160E, wherever it is warm water. But, based on evidence, the most affected areas are Caribbean Sea with the frequency of 10-15 per year. The good weather forecast can predict the both, but then it is always a doubt if the atmospheric signs have been read correctly.

     There are the misunderstanding among hurricane, cyclone or typhoon and that why is very significant to know location where the storm begins so we can categorize them. Generally, they present the same weather phenomenon and as it is stated in the article of National Ocean Service:” In the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, the term ‘hurricane’ is used. The same type of disturbance in the Northwest Pacific is called a ‘typhoon’ and ‘cyclones’ occur in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.”

     The expression tropical cyclone covers the organized system of thunderstorms that star over tropical and subtropical waters with the intention to get bigger and become stronger. When the moment of 74 miles per hour is there, we could try to define the storm as a hurricane, typhoon or cyclone. Basically, every storm that originates from warm oceans is a tropical cyclone that need to show the real power to be classified as hurricane if it is in the Atlantic or Northeast Pacific, typhoon if it is born in the Northwest Pacific or simply cyclon when comes from the South Pacific or Indian Ocean.

     So, tornadoes and hurricane are totally different form of storms with some similar characteristics and many differences. But, the hurricanes share the category of other tropical cyclones:typhoons and cyclones, grounded on their location.  The tornadoes and hurricanes can sometimes happen at the same time but it is very rare to find that they fuel themselves at the same ground. Tornadoes are vertical winds and hurricanes are horizontal. Their mixture in destruction is uncommon but we shouldn’t stop chasing the possibilities to get into the structure of both of storms so they could be prevented.

     The global warming and the extreme changes in the weather system will definitely open the debated issue of indicators of so frequently hurricanes and tornadoes in recent time. It is very obvious that Earth’s lower atmosphere is becoming warmer with high level of moist that is directly related to the industrial aggravations and emission of greenhouse gases. That could cause in the long period of time the radical changes in weather modes and scientists argue about the quantity and quality of climate damage. The North America and Europe are already facing up with the climate oppositions they have never experienced before. However, it is still not confirmed if the climate changes themselves turn the tornadoes and hurricanes into the more dangerous forms or it is just a matter of natural incomes and outcomes. I find it very unprofessional to blame climate changes for all but there are cases that we are responsible for and that could be fixed if not totally eliminated.

     The mankind needs a lot of devoted studies to the area of deadly storms so we could reach the level we know what we are really dealing with. For now, those strong winds remain a kind of enigma. From Dorothy flight with tornado via lost sailors in the hurricane to the tornado chasers, the people are still unaware how majestic and powerful the nature is, even when it sends to us its own deep  breath.