What do Tornado clouds look like ?

Question

What do Tornado clouds look like ?

Answer 1

Well, do you mean the actual tornado, or what you should be looking for before one starts?

A tornado looks like a funnel (99% of the time)

But you should be looking for wall clouds that can easily drop tornadoes in no time. They look just like they sound a large wall. It will be very dark and they split off easily and start rotating to form tornadoes. It isn't always this way, but generally it's a good sign.

Answer 2

a funnel

Answer 3

Tornadoes spawn from severe thunderstorms, usually a super cell thunderstorm, which is a large group of cumulonimbus clouds that begin to stack very high into the atmosphere, usually forming an anvil shape. As seen here: http://einstein.atmos.colostate.edu/~mcn... cell_052200.jpg



They don't all always look like that, and can appear almost in a shelf-like stacking. Seen here: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/newsletter/2...

These storms don't mean there will be a tornado though, they are just the kinds of clouds and storms that are able to produce one most of the time.

If a tornado is going to form, usually a wall cloud will begin to drop down from the bottom of the supercell. It's usually a very large, low, shaggy looking cloud that has a "tail" a lot of the times. Sometimes people mistake the tail for a tornado. This is the cloud that will often show visible rotation. As seen here: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pih/severe/photo...

And here:http://australiasevereweather.com/photog...

From there, the wall cloud will begin to rotate, which is sometimes very visible, and other times, not so much. A funnel cloud will begin to descend from the wall cloud. As seen here:http://wvlightning.com/april232007/funne...

If this makes contact with the ground, you'll have a full fledged tornado.

This is just to give you a general idea of what to look for, but keep in mind that not all tornadoes form in these steps. Sometimes the wall cloud isn't as apparent, or the thunderstorm doesn't look like the ones in the pictures. Sometimes the sky will appear very obviously turbulent and scary, but other times, not as much. You might want to do a google image search for the terms listed to get a broad overview of the different ways these things can appear. Always be aware of severe thunderstorm watches and warnings and tornado watches and warnings in the area!

Hope this helped!

Answer 4

kinda like a vortex funnel thingy

Answer 5

funnel clouds

Answer 6

well in colroado over the last few weeks we've had a lot of them

i would look at 9news.com for pictures of them over windsor. there is also video footage.

we had to fit the whole school into the gym's lockerbays

the clouds were ominous and dark and converging.