Tornado Alley: Anatomy of a Supercell
In the heartland of the United States, stretching from Texas to the Dakotas, lies a region known ominously as "Tornado Alley." Here, the sky is a vast stage for some of the planet’s most violent weather. While tornadoes can occur anywhere in the world, this region’s unique geography creates a perfect laboratory for their formation, born from the belly of a specific and terrifying type of thunderstorm: the supercell. A supercell is not an ordinary thunderstorm. It is a massive, long-lived, and highly organized storm characterized by a deep, persistently rotating updraft known as a mesocyclone. This rotation is the key to its destructive potential. The ingredients for a supercell converge dramatically in Tornado Alley during the spring. Warm, moisture-laden air from the Gulf of Mexico surges northward at low levels. Simultaneously, cool, dry air from the Rocky Mountains streams in at mid-levels, while the fast-moving jet stream provides strong winds high in the atmosphere. Th...