Tornado Season in Wichita, Kansas?

Question

I am doing a project and I have to basicly follow a tornado in a place of my choice (Wichita, Kansas). I need some tidbits of information to finish it off though.

1. What would people be doing before? (Like, daily routine, but what is normal is Wichita? Farming, etc.)

2. What is the landscape like?

3. What makes a tornado? (pretty much simple, but technical)

4. What are some changes to the enviroment and man made objects (roads, buildings, etc.)?

5. What are the chances of a tornado happening in Wichita? (Just tell me why wichita would get alot of them)

6. How would people know a tornado is coming? (What machine would they use and how does it work)

7. Does Wichita have any special buildings that will be tornado safe? (Like, if you knew a tornado is coming, you know this place will be safe 100%)

you don't have to answer all of these, but if you know any of them, there may just be 10 points coming your way... So just post if you know any of these!!

Answer 1

Some of these are hard to answer but...

2. The landscape throughout Kansas is wide open and flat.  This landscape is one of the factors that aides tornado development in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and some of the other "Tornado Alley" states.

3.  The basic answer you will hear most often is that severe thunderstorms and tornadoes form "when warm air and cold air collide."  While this is generally true, there is more to it.  When warm air is below cold air, it tries to rise, creating an updraft.  This updraft creates the thunderstorm when the moisture in it condenses and starts to fall back down as rain.  As the air rises, another necessary component is "wind shear."  This is a change in wind speed or direction with height, which makes the updraft start to rotate. A rotating updraft is called a "mesocyclone."  A rotating thunderstorm with a mesocyclone is called a "supercell."  Next to the mesocyclone there will be the "RFD," or "Rear Flank Downdraft."  This downdraft is created by sinking rain-cooled air.  When the RFD reaches towards the ground, it sometimes will pull the rotating air in the mesocyclone down with it.  If this rotation makes it to the ground, it becomes a tornado.

4.  As with any city, there will be roads and buildings in Wichita.  These, however, have little to no effect on tornado development.

5. The Wichita area is in what is called "Tornado Alley."  The most intense area of Tornado Alley runs from North Texas through Kansas.  The reason this area gets so many tornadoes is that it is right where warm, moist air can flow in from the Gulf of Mexico, hot dry air can come from Mexico, and cold dry air can feed in from the Rockies.  This creates very favorable conditions for severe thunderstorms in the spring.  This said, the chances of any one location in tornado alley getting hit by a tornado are still extremely small.  However, the chances that you will be able to see one from a distance is fairly high if you live in one of these areas.

6.  There are storm spotters and chasers that report tornadoes once they have visual confirmation, but lots of times there are no spotters or chasers around when there is a tornado. When this is the case, Doppler radar is used to detect tornadoes.  There are many signatures that tornadic supercells tend to have.  Once the warning signs of a tornado have been detected, the National Weather Service will issue a tornado warning.  Areas in the warning often will have tornado sirens that can be sounded should a tornado be approaching.

7.  The best place to be in a building is in the center of the lowest floor, like a basement or storm shelter.  I do not know where Wichita's strongest buildings are, but most of the time you will not have time to leave your home to take shelter if a tornado is approaching.  It is becoming possible to have safe-rooms built into a building, often with reinforced concrete walls, as well as being stocked with supplies.  These should be safe from most tornadoes, but I have never read reports of their performance.

Hope I could help, but continue to do more research.  I do know what I am talking about, having lived in Tornado Alley and studied severe weather all of my life.