Thursday, March 4, 2010

Tornado- Casey



Dear Aunt Donna and Uncle Steve,

Hi, how are you? Hope you’re both doing well, because you may be in a bit of a frantic mood when I tell you what I just heard. So allow me to start from the beginning. Yesterday, flipping through the channels on my television, I passed a channel that surely got my attention per say. A flash of bright red, orange, and yellow colors with one tiny green dot in the middle looked to be forming around your area on the local Doppler radar! In reality, this green dot was the eye of a tornado! Being you live in Chicago, it wouldn’t be considered extremely rare for you to have tornadoes, but after looking at this picture, I would take some precautions if I were you.

You know that I don’t want you to be worried, and I promise everything will be okay if you just listen to the research I found about the storm itself, so maybe you will know how to take the right precautions. First off, the weather station has already initiated a tornado warning in your area, so get out and get supplies while you can before it turns into a tornado watch. Once the storm does accelerate to a tornado watch, there are some helpful ways you can tell if a tornado is truly going to be forming in your area soon. Check your humidity in your area. The moisture in the lower to mid-levels of your atmosphere is one of the key ingredients to your storm approaching. Second, check for unstable air. What I mean by this is air that continues to rise once it begins rising from the ground is the kind of air that is needed. The third must-have to creating a great tornado is the lifting force. There’s heating of air happening, and since hot air rises, there’s a cycle of cool on the bottom and the hot air on top mixing. The humid air on the bottom rises to the sky and begins to cool. This creates a thunderstorm. Within thunderstorms, there is something called an updraft. This updraft is where tornadoes base off of. One major sign of a thunderstorm forming are those thick, white, fluffy looking clouds. Those clouds hold a lot of moisture.

I hope I helped! If you would like more information on tornadoes, click here. I wish you the best.
I’m sure everything will be fine.


Love you!

--Casey

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