Exam 15: Tornadoes

The original Fujita scale, implemented in 1971, was based mainly on tornado damage incurred by a(n)____________________.

If you are driving in a car and a tornado is still at some distance, you should drive ____.

Opening windows during a tornado increases the pressure on the opposite wall and ____.

During the ____, tornadoes are most likely to form over the southern Gulf states when the polar-front jet is above this region.

As air rushes upward and spins around a low-pressure core of the vortex, the air expands, cools, and, if sufficiently moist, condenses into a ____.

Explain the atmospheric conditions of the Central Plains region of the United States that make this location so susceptible to tornadoes.

To an observer on the ground, the first sign that a supercell may give birth to a tornado is the sight of ____.

The strength of a rear-flank downdraft is driven by the amount of precipitation-induced cooling in the upper levels of the storm.

In the central and southern Great Plains regions, tornadoes are most likely to form during which season?

Tornadoes that do not occur in association with a mid-level mesocyclone (or a preexisting wall cloud)of a supercell are called ____________________ tornadoes.

As warm, humid air is drawn into a supercell tornado, it ____ as it rises.

Damage from a tornado is normally most severe during the ____ stage.

Tornadoes that form along a gust front are commonly called ____.

In recent years, most of our knowledge about what goes on inside a tornado-generating thunderstorm has been gathered through the use of ____ .

A system called Doppler lidar uses a light beam to measure the change in frequency of falling precipitation, cloud particles, and dust.

To help distinguish a storm's air motions, a Doppler radar can display ____.

With the Doppler radar, a radar transmitter sends out ____, and when they strike an object, some are reflected and scattered back to the antenna.

A rotating column of air connected to a cumuliform cloud over a large body of water is known as ____ .

The first stage of a tornado's life cycle is the organizing stage.

A tornado of an ____ level intensity will completely demolish a structure such as a house.