Florida usually experiences destructive tornadoes during spring and summer. I have experienced tornadoes destructions in the state and don’t want to stay around when the next one happens.
Are tornadoes serious in Florida? The state experiences the most powerful tornadoes in spring. The Sunshine state is known as the state that has the highest frequency of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles in America, even more than Oklahoma.
Florida has sunny and warm weather most of the time. However, sometimes the weather goes to the extreme. It could be by way of heavy thunderstorms, microbursts, or hurricanes at different times.
Are tornadoes serious in Florida?
Yes, Florida does have serious tornadoes.
The state has more tornadoes than every other state of America in terms of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles.
It is thunderstorms that give birth to tornadoes. There are thunderstorms all over the state during the storm season. This makes the state a perfect breeding ground for tornadoes.
The National Weather Service (NWS) defined a tornado as a violently rotating column of air that extends from the base of a thunderstorm down to the ground. However, from this definition, you cannot fully understand the raw power of a tornado.
A tornado is a storm that can come with or without any warning. In most severe cases, it comes with winds at about 250 miles per hour. A tornado destroys a lot of things anywhere it passes.
How Tornadoes Form
You may ask how tornadoes form. The simple and straight answer is when the mass of warm, humid air meets a mass of cool, dry air, the warm air will rise through the cool air.
This will disturb the atmosphere and will result in thunderstorms. A powerful updraft, a mesocyclone, will be created as warm air rises.
The updraft will begin to rotate if the wind conditions are favorable. The storm will continue to be fed by the spinning updraft and will develop into a supercell thunderstorm. Some supercell storms result in tornadoes, but not all of them.
Why Does Florida get so Many Tornadoes?
The kind of weather that exists in Florida during the summer months helps heavy thunderstorms to develop. The state always experiences a high degree of heat and moisture that helps in generating big masses of warm, rising air. The blend will develop into a thunderstorm when these air masses come in contact with cooler air masses.
When the thunderstorm becomes very heavy it gives birth to a tornado. The annual weather data of Florida can attest to this.
There are two major reasons Florida is always tornado-prone. The first is the thunderstorms we mentioned earlier. It can visit any part of the state, be it Key West, Jacksonville, or Panama City.
The second reason is that Florida is on the path of tropical storms and hurricanes. This always leads to severe weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes the state is known for.
Some parts of Florida experience tornadoes more than others. For instance, those Florida regions located between the Tampa Bay area and Fort Myers always experience more storms and tornadoes than areas located further into the mainland.
There are also more severe weather experiences like tornadoes in the state’s western panhandle. There are frequent storms in some areas along the Atlantic coast also.
Florida has witnessed two strongest tornadoes in its history, both in Polk County. The Florida Climate Center at FSU recorded that a tornado on the 15th of April 1958 caused heavy damages rated F4 on the Fujita scale in Polk County.
This is one of the two F4 tornadoes that have visited Florida in history. On the 4th of April 1966, another F4 tornado visited Polk County, this time near Gibsonia.
Florida sees more tornadoes than most states. Florida occupies the third position in America on the annual average of tornado visitations. The first position is occupied by Texas, followed by Kansas, which is in the second position.
Usually, the state of Florida experiences tornadoes in June, but the most destructive ones use to come during spring.
Tornadoes and Tropical Storms
During a tropical storm or hurricane, tornadoes become a higher risk. Tampa Bay is within the northeast zone of the panhandle.
Whenever Tropical Storm Nestor is moving in that direction, the 10News meteorologists will start to warn of a possible tornado before the storm gets there. Florida is known as the state with a high rate of tornadoes per 10,000 square miles, more than any other state in America, even Oklahoma.
Tampa Bay is a hot spot. There is a high rate of tornadoes along the coast between Tampa Bay and Fort Myers.
How tornadoes are rated
We can rate the strong tornado that occurred as an EF2 tornado. Only when a tornado has come and gone can its effect be determined.
This is when the survey teams from the National Weather Service must have accessed the structural damages it left behind. After the assessment, the tornado will be rated according to Fujita Scale.
The Fujita Scale
Dr. T. Theodore Fujita was the person that developed the Fujita Scale. It is a tool used in rating tornadoes according to their intensity and area.
With the scale, the relationship between the damages caused by a tornado and its fast quarter-mile wind speed is used to ascertain its intensity.
Florida witnessed its deadliest tornado visitation on the 22nd of February, 1998. The F3 tornado first visited just a mile south of Intercession City, about 11.7 miles away from Disney World.
It later moved towards the northeast at 45 mph, going through the town of Kissimmee and taking 25 lives. It caused heavy damage at the Morningside Acres mobile home community and the Ponderosa Recreational Vehicle Park.
A total of eight lives were lost in recreational vehicles, 15 in mobile homes, and 1 in an automobile.
It continued further northeast to Orange County, six miles north of St. Cloud. About 150 people sustained different degrees of injuries, and over 1,000 structures were vandalized.
FAQs
What city in Florida has the most tornadoes?
Tampa has the most tornadoes and experiences five tornadoes yearly.
What is the deadliest tornado in Florida?
The Kissimmee tornado.
The Kissimmee tornado outbreak in 1988 was the deadliest tornado in the state.