A couple of these are pretty obvious and well known but they can all bear repeating. I figure tornado season is coming and it would be good to remind people early and get a little ahead of the curve. One of the points is that tornadoes also show up in winter if the conditions are right.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/meteorology/news-ten-myths-about-tornado-dangerous-type-storm

Not only will tornadoes occur in the winter, they will also occur in southern California. Last week the west end of our county had a very brief tornado alert. I watched it on internet radar and it went away very quickly. I kept thinking, "The deal was, I would put up with earthquakes and fire, but tornadoes were supposed to stay in Kansas. This isn't fair!"

we get them off the back edge of a cold front, where the dense cold air drives the warmer moisture laden air up, where it condenses...the Gulf of Mexico has tremendous heat storage, but only rarely do we get the Tornado Alley supercells

I am told that the UK has the highest number of tornadoes per square mile than every other country. Is that true?

One thing about tornadoes, almost always you generally get a good advance warning, at least where decent weather prediction services are present. Right now they are talking about rain starting Friday with possible thunderstorms for our area on Saturday and possible "instability" (which equals possible tornadoes). It is probably worth going to condition yellow and pay attention to the weather.

In South Dakota, where I have spent a lot of the summer for the past few years, you get the same kind of heads up, and you learn to scan the sky for signs of rotation.

I always understood that "Tornado Alley" in the US was the world center for Ts.....

Yeap The UK does have the highest number of tornado's per area of land. On the whole they are not as powerful as your's. Many of our Tornado's are known as spin off Tornado's but we have super cells Tornado's too.

I have stormed chased in UK, Europe, US and Australia. I used to be a sight investigator for TORRO the UK Tornado Research Organisation. I have seen 4 tornado's on the ground, 6 water spouts and countless funnel clouds in the UK.

http://www.torro.org.uk/site/index.php

we have a very good doppler radar network here on the west coast of Florida, and if you have a NOAA weather alert radio programable with your county specific codes, you get a more location specific violent weather alert warning...adds a little peace of mind when you go to bed on a stormy night

Not quite. It's the highest number of reported tornadoes per square mile. We're so densely populated I think tornadoes here have a higher chance of being noticed and reported.

Also, we're a small country. I wouldn't be surprised if took an area the size of the UK and plonked it over the right part of the US, you got a higher rate, but the US rate drops when you average it over the entire country.

In fact, now that I look into it, I'm not sure it's true at all. The FAQ on the TORRO site says 33 reported tornadoes a year. That's about the same as Vermont, and I hadn't thought Vermont was a big state.

Which isn't to say tornadoes aren't a threat here. They're one of the few real natural threats we do have. We don't have much in the way of volcanoes, earthquakes or hurricanes.

Good info. Anyone who's not had the pleasure of having a near miss (or hit) by a tornado - do your self a favor and keep on keeping on. That's one thing I'd have rather done without in my life; I think of all the fury mother nature can bundle up and throw at me, the one thing that genuinely horrifies me is a tornado.

Just for interest, when I chase in the US with other British chasers. We use Baron Mobile Treat Net software to keep track of cells, and weather alerts. Its expensive at a $100 a month but worth every penny when chasing. All the data we need in one package.

I finally followed the link; was interesting reading. The two that I had believed were that larger tornados were more dangeorus than small ones, and that a tornado is only dangerous when it's on the ground.

For me the most significant myth that I used to believe was that tornados don't normally happen here in the PNW. And while they are more rare than in tornado alley, according to NOAA:



It surprised me to learn this a while back, since it seems each torando is reported by the media as some strange fluke. Because we don't get torandos here, those only happen way over in tornado alley, right?

I would like to de-bunk the de-bunker. This is not generally known, so you can tell people that "you heard it here first."

In February of 1947, as the U.S. was embarking on a major investment in residential housing, a historic meeting was held between the real estate and banking lobby, and the tornado lobby. Negotiations were difficult. Threats were made. The tornadoes threatened to strike at random. The banks threatened to seed the clouds. It was ugly, but the real estate interests were pragmatic. There were buildings to be built and money to be made.

The final agreement was that, in return for free rein over trailer parks, small towns, and minor shopping centers, tornadoes would stay out of central cities and away from affluent neighborhoods of major cities. With only a few exceptions, the agreement has held. No one was ever to reveal the existence of the agreement, and that has held too. But, since the Internet is anonymous, I can reveal it. My uncle, a noted meteorologist, was in the room.

Further discussions were sought with hurricanes, but they refused to participate. "Try seeding our clouds and we will destroy every single building between Houston and Boston. As soon as you rebuild, we will do it again," their representative said. "We will do exactly as we please, and you will take it. Now get out of here, before we get mad."