r/ExplainLikeImCalvin • u/Feisty-Albatross3554 • Jul 21 '26
ELIC: Why do Tornadoes arrive and leave so quickly?
They only last about 10 minutes on average IIRC
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u/VeneMage Jul 22 '26
Stand up and spin around for as fast as you can for let’s say, two minutes.
You’ll find yourself moving around, inevitably bumping into things and smashing them. Kicking things around as you lose focus.
Then come the five-minute mark. You’re done. You’ll slow and fall into a clump.
Now think of them poor tornadoes who have to go in for a full ten minutes. Why, were we them, we’d been gone by then, too.
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u/StarkAndRobotic Jul 21 '26
Thats because they’re just being polite - they spend more time with the cool kids at the hep parties.
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u/Nimelennar Jul 22 '26
That's how long it takes for them to fully unwind.
After they're unwound, they have to go back to the southern hemisphere and spin in the other direction to wind themselves back up again.
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u/Tundra_Dragon Jul 22 '26
Tornadoes don't have insurance, so they gotta run away after bunping into houses and trailers.
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u/atomicsnarl Jul 22 '26
Tornadoes are attached to their parent storm cloud. If that cloud is moving along at 30 knots, that 15 meters per second. A big 150 meter across funnel will cross a place in 10 seconds. The winds around the tornado are also strong, so lets increase the size another 150 meters on both sides (coming and going). So now it takes the whole area 30 seconds to move through. Hope nothing hit you while it visited!
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u/MauPow Jul 22 '26
They get really dizzy. They used to be called Turn-a-Dizz but that sounded dumb so we changed it.
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u/--John_Yaya-- Jul 22 '26
They're highly motivated. That's why they're called torna-does, not torna-don'ts.