AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno explains the difference between damaging straight-line winds and tornadoes.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00And severe weather racing across Mississippi and Louisiana this morning.
00:09The main threat and what we've been seeing damaging winds and tornado.
00:13The ingredients are somewhat similar for both, but there are some differences and that's
00:19why you get different phenomena like damaging winds and tornadoes.
00:23Now damaging straight line winds is where you have the increasing wind with height.
00:29You see that with tornadoes as well, but here's the difference.
00:31The wind direction is the same from the surface to the upper part of the atmosphere.
00:37And when you get that, oftentimes you get a push of air out ahead of the line of thunderstorms
00:42where you could have damaging wind gusts and even downbursts.
00:47What happens is some of the rain that falls from the cloud evaporates.
00:51That's a cooling process and that forces the air down and then it accelerates outward.
00:57Now the ingredients for tornadoes, somewhat similar as straight line winds.
01:02You get the increasing wind with height, but here's the main difference.
01:06Not only do you get an increasing wind with height, but you get the change of wind direction
01:10with height coming in, let's say out of the southeast at the surface, west, northwest
01:15a lot.
01:16So that changing wind direction, what does that do?
01:19It causes the air to rotate in the horizontal.
01:23So you get this rotating column of air within the horizontal because of that wind direction,
01:29that change direction with height.
01:31Then updrafts takes the horizontal rotation and makes it more vertical.
01:37And of course, the stronger the wind shear, the stronger the updraft, the stronger the
01:42tornado, but that's the difference between straight line winds and tornadoes.
01:50It's all about the change of wind direction with height.
01:53And now you know, stay with us.