Do you HAVE to have a big cloud to have a tornado?????? Can you have them in little or no clouds???

Question

Do you HAVE to have a big cloud to have a tornado?????? Can you have them in little or no clouds???

Answer 1

You have to have a wall cloud or a thunderstorm with rotation to get a  tornado. As far as the tornado itself goes, they are of various sizes and shapes...

Answer 2

Hi Tink,

Tornadoes are land based funnel clouds that originate from what we call supercell thunderstorms. So to answer your question, yes they do come from relatively large clouds with lots of updrafts and downdrafts.

On the other hand, waterspouts, which are the tornado's water faring counterpart do not need such convection due to the flat, even scape of the ocean.

Some waterspouts have been recorded coming from Towering Cumulus clouds, which are middle of the line convective form clouds.

Any form of funnel cloud coming from clear skies, stratus clouds or small cumulus clouds are strictly fable and scientifically aren't possible.

Answer 3

oh yes....tornados can come out of no where....i would now, im form texas, we have'em every other week...lol

Answer 4

There are many types of tornadoes, ones that come from storms, the most dangerous ones, need cloudes, while the dust devil type, can form out of just heavy wind currents, because these form on the ground instead of the sky

Answer 5

For a real tornado you need a pretty decent sized cloud, but not necessarily the massive thunderstorms that they have in the Great Plains.  During the winters in California we sometimes get tornadoes from what are called "mini-supercells" which are substantially smaller than your garden variety thunderstorm.

Answer 6

They do need clouds and usually a lot of cloudiness associated with each tornado.   They don't just occur out of no where.  That never happens. Usually there are very intense and large storms around.   And no clouds,  well that is entirely 100% impossible...