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Straight-line wind vs. tornadoes
AccuWeather
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3/31/2025
AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno explains the difference between damaging straight-line winds and tornadoes.
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Transcript
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00:00
And severe weather racing across Mississippi and Louisiana this morning.
00:09
The main threat and what we've been seeing damaging winds and tornado.
00:13
The ingredients are somewhat similar for both, but there are some differences and that's
00:19
why you get different phenomena like damaging winds and tornadoes.
00:23
Now damaging straight line winds is where you have the increasing wind with height.
00:29
You see that with tornadoes as well, but here's the difference.
00:31
The wind direction is the same from the surface to the upper part of the atmosphere.
00:37
And when you get that, oftentimes you get a push of air out ahead of the line of thunderstorms
00:42
where you could have damaging wind gusts and even downbursts.
00:47
What happens is some of the rain that falls from the cloud evaporates.
00:51
That's a cooling process and that forces the air down and then it accelerates outward.
00:57
Now the ingredients for tornadoes, somewhat similar as straight line winds.
01:02
You get the increasing wind with height, but here's the main difference.
01:06
Not only do you get an increasing wind with height, but you get the change of wind direction
01:10
with height coming in, let's say out of the southeast at the surface, west, northwest
01:15
a lot.
01:16
So that changing wind direction, what does that do?
01:19
It causes the air to rotate in the horizontal.
01:23
So you get this rotating column of air within the horizontal because of that wind direction,
01:29
that change direction with height.
01:31
Then updrafts takes the horizontal rotation and makes it more vertical.
01:37
And of course, the stronger the wind shear, the stronger the updraft, the stronger the
01:42
tornado, but that's the difference between straight line winds and tornadoes.
01:50
It's all about the change of wind direction with height.
01:53
And now you know, stay with us.
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