Tornadoes - HELP !?

Question

why do tornadoes form more often in Tornado Valley than in any other place on earth?

please help [ =

thanks a lot (:

Answer 1

The conditions that are best able to produce tornadic thunderstorms tend to exist most often in the central and southern plains, the so called Tornado Alley.  The intrusion of warm moist air from the Gulf, the unhindered access to colder air from way north, plus the general north-south orientation of the Rocky Mountains tends to allow low pressure systems to quickly organize just east of the mountains.  The resultant atmospheric wind fields that result from these intensifying lows are many times favorable for allowing particularly strong thunderstorms to acquire rotation, which can lead to tornado formation.   Outside of this area the conditions tend to be less favorable.

Answer 2

They form on plains - NOT valleys

Tornado Valley? Maybe Tornado ALLEY

Tornadoes like to travel straight in plains - they don't want to go to the trouble of going up a hill or mountain or down into a valley.

If you live somewhere like Kansas or Oklahoma, it's Tornado Alley.

Nuff Said. :-)

Answer 3

I think everyone's of the opinion that you must have meant Tornado Alley, not Valley. Some of the answers are close, but they're also a bit screwed up.  To form tornadoes, you need two things

1. Potential energy in the form of air near the surface that can have its energy released if it's lifted high enough.  In the Great Plains it's warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that supplies the potential energy in the form of the latent heat of vaporization of water. With the daytime heating it gets lifted high enough so that clouds form and it starts accelerating upward, as more and more water condenses out of it.

2. Wind shear.  You get that when the wind the wind direction changes from the surface to other directions as you go up.  In Tornado Alley it's often from the south or southeast at the surface, and the west or northwest aloft. You need the winds to be strong, but not too strong.

Forget all that stuff about cold air from Canada aloft--that's not usually true and it's certainly not necessary. You do want the air aloft to be dry, though, but it usually is after crossing the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains on its journey from the west coast (not Canada).

Answer 4

because thats when cold fronts and warm fronts meet, u know how 2 different things attract ......well NOT in weather

Answer 5

because on the west there is high pressure and on the east of torando alley there is low pressure. When these too mix they cause of tornado

Answer 6

Tornadoes form more often there b/c the conditions that are necessary for the development of tornadoes occur here more often.  

You need warm moist air at the surface and cool dry air aloft to start with.  The warm moist air comes up from the Gulf of Mexico.  The cool dry air aloft comes from Canada.  The warm moist air at the surface and lower levels of the atmosphere (925mb through 850mb) creates the instability needed to fuel the thunderstorms.  The cool dry air aloft helps with steeper lapse rates and the condensation of water vapor into clouds.  

You want dew points at the 700mb level to be below 0C or as close to it as possible.  

You also need strong speed shear (increase of winds with height) and strong directional shear (change of wind direction with height).  If you have strong directional shear (winds from the surface up to 700mb change at a 45 degree angle (S or SE at the surface with winds veering to WNW at 700mb) this creates high helicity values (atmospheric spin).  You want helicity values to be greater than 400 m2s2.  Strong speed shear is good b/c it adds wind energy to the storms and it helps with the rotation purposes.  It also helps to tilt the thunderstorms updraft so it doesn't get choked by the storms downdraft.  

What happens in Tornado Alley is you get Warm fronts lifting Northward from the Gulf of Mexico.  To the south of the warm front is the warm sector.  This is where the warm moist air is.  Winds are usually from the S or the SE.  You get low pressure systems coming in from the Pacific.  Low pressure systems have both warm fronts and Cold Fronts connected to them.  The Warm Front pushes North while the Cold front pushes South and East.  The cold front brings in the colder and drier air aloft and with warm moist air at the surface along with high speed and directional shear from both the low pressure system and along the warm front this creates the ingridients needed to form supercells (rotating thunderstorms) which can spawn the tornadoes.  

With high dew points this also usually means low LCL (Lifted condensation level) levels which has also been noted in major tornadoes (this was the case in VA yesterday).

The kitty,

you need to learn more about weather.  Your answer was totally 100% wrong.  It also really didn't make much sense.