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The second crack cocaine in four days , not include a rare soaker , touched down in California yesterday .

Our amazing planet.

California is n’t precisely Tornado Alley the twister hotspot of the United States with only about five twister per class . But as West Coasters have seen , tornado can form at any sentence and any place , often with lilliputian card . [ connect : Twisted Science : Why Tornado Forecasting Is Tough ]

Last Friday ( March 18 ) , a violent storm spawn awaterspoutthat touch down off Ocean Beach . The same violent storm create an EF-1 tornado that demolish a alloy building in Santa Rosa , according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman , Okla. Yesterday an EF-0 tornado briefly touched down near Maxwell , Calif.

California twister

Volunteers and residents clear up wreckage after mobile home was hit by a tornado on March 16, 2025 in Calera, Alabama.

California is a prize instance of how twisters can form under many condition . Textbook tornadoes signifier in Tornado Alley in the Great Plains , where warm , moist Gulf of Mexico air collides with coolheaded , northern air , produce the monumental storms that spin off tornado .

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In California , Friday ’s crack was due to instability make along a cold front and channelize wind vivid winds botch up in the same direction that generated swirling storm , say Mark Strobin , a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey , Calif.

A satellite view of stormy weather sweeping across Florida on Monday morning when the tornado hit north of Orlando.

Yesterday ’s tornado in Maxwell was due to an upper level downcast - atmospheric pressure organisation swinge through behind that cold frontal system , said Tom Dang , a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento .

" This is the distinctive government for that to happen , " Dang narrate OurAmazingPlanet .

Yet even if this weather approach pattern were to happen 10 times , a tornado would probably only form once or twice , Dang say . Still , when spring rolls around in the United States , everyone has to be prepared for tornadoes .

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Down the alleys

Tornado season began sooner this month , and typically make its step from May to June .

G of tornadoes will strike the United States each year , mostly in the hotbed known as Tornado Alley , frame by the Dakotas to the due north , the Gulf Coast to the Dixieland , the Rocky Mountains to the Benjamin West and the Appalachian Mountains to the eastern United States .

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Southeast of Tornado Alley is Dixie Alley , home to the mortal tornadoes . In 2010 , Mississippi led the nation with three sea wolf tornadoes and 13 tornado related death .

Outside the zona

The large tornado alleys may pull all the attention , and the bravestorm chasers , but every stateeven Alaskacan have tornadoes . Maine has about two tornadoes each yr , and Arizona has three . For the first fourth dimension , Minnesota led the United States with 113 tornado last year .

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New Jersey and New Hampshire had one crack each , last blank space among res publica that get wind tornadoes in 2010 . Of naturally , twister are n’t a purely American atmospheric condition threat . touchdown have been describe on every continent except Antarctica .

Tornadoes do n’t just spring during the day either . nighttime twister can be some of the most baneful because tornadoes are hard to see at dark and people incline to sleep through warn sirens . Thirty - nine pct of crack cocaine fatality and 42 percent ofkiller tornado issue come about at night .

tornado can also strike during any time of the class ( November is often called thesecond tornado season ) , even during the winter . A crack cocaine hit New York City at night in September last twelvemonth .

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In 2010 , 45 masses were killed by twister across the United States .

A lightning "mapper" on the GOES-16 satellite captured images of the megaflash lightning bolt on April 29, 2020, over the southeastern U.S.

In this illustration, men are enthralled by ball lightning, observed at the Hotel Georges du Loup, near Nice. To this day, ball lightning remains mysterious.

The "wildfires" in this image are actually Orion�s Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves. The image was taken with the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located in Chile�s Atacama Desert.

In this aerial view of Mayfield, Kentucky, homes are shown badly destroyed after a tornado ripped through the area overnight Friday, Dec. 10, 2021.

Caught on high-speed video, lightning streamers of opposite polarity approach and connect in this sequence of video frames, slowed by more than 10,000-fold. The common streamer zone appears in the last two frames before the whiteout of the lightning flash. This lasted about 0.00003 seconds at full speed

Tropical Storm Theta

An image comparing the relative sizes of our solar system�s known dwarf planets, including the newly discovered 2017 OF201

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A small phallic stalagmite is encircled by a 500-year-old bracelet carved from shell with Maya-like imagery

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A man with light skin and dark hair and beard leans back in a wooden boat, rowing with oars into the sea

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