Nature
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It’s not often high-resolution footage of a tornado ripping through houses gets released, but a new video captured by drone shows the destructive power of an EF3 tornado as it travels through Kansas. Despite the apparent chaos it caused, no lives were lost.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The incredible high-definition footage was posted on Twitter by meteorologist Reed Timmer, and has since been spotted all over social media. The tornado itself destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in Kansas and lifted vehicles into the sky, before leaving the ground after about 21 minutes.
"Note how the tornado propagates via vortex dynamics and likely terrain,” Timmer wrote in the accompanying tweet.
Check out the incredible footage below.
The tornado has been rated an EF-3 based on preliminary data, meaning winds reached between 219 and 266 kilometers per hour (136 and 165 miles per hour).
Andover, the town that was worst affected, has a majority of wooden houses, due to high frequency of tornadoes. In these scenarios, it is more viable to simply rebuild the buildings, instead of trying to out-muscle Mother Nature.
Although scientists are making every attempt at being able to predict when and where tornadoes will form thanks to detailed satellite imagery and forecast models, twisters can still be violently unpredictable. Unfortunately, climate change is ripping up the rule book, causing tornadoes to be longer, stronger, earlier, and more common while shifting the path of their destruction.
