One-sentence summary
Today we assess some of the commentary around a viral tornado video from the weekend to discuss if it would be possible to “blow up” a tornado.
Can you actually blow up a tornado?
That’s a provocative subheading above, but it’s taken on a little more curiosity after video emerged from this past weekend’s tragic tornado outbreak in the Deep South and Tennessee Valley.
The tornadoes killed six and injured over 80 in Middle Tennessee on Saturday. Clarksville was hit with an EF-3 tornado. This area has seen more than their fair share of significant weather in recent years.
A video from one of the tornadoes is what seems to have grabbed everyone’s attention, and justifiably so.
But what’s notable about this whole thing: In the original video, it appears that, if only for a fleeting moment, the condensation funnel (what you are visually seeing as the tornado) disappears. Naturally, that started some interesting conversations on various social media platforms. The underlying question you would expect humans, especially on social media to ask was: Can you actually, like, blow up a tornado?
Before we go on: No. We cannot “blow up” tornadoes, just as we cannot “nuke” hurricanes. It’s too complex, not to mention the likelihood of collateral damage. So, let’s just get that out of the way.
But in a theoretical world without risk to lives or property, could you do it? I still don’t think so. Noted storm chaser Reed Timmer posted on X, formerly Twitter over the weekend that the “explosion changed the thermodynamic gradients dramatically within the vortex and blew up the Clausius-Clapeyron equation.” I’m not going to lose our audience here with a math lesson, but the C-C equation relates saturation vapor pressure to temperature. What is saturation vapor pressure? Vapor pressure is basically exactly that: What is the pressure of the water vapor in the air. But at a given temperature, there’s a maximum amount of moisture that the air can hold. That would give you the saturation vapor pressure. Using C-C, we can determine that as temperature increases, the saturation vapor pressure of the air increases exponentially. In other words: Warm air can hold a lot more moisture than cold air, and the relationship is exponential.
What does this all mean? Theoretically (very theoretically), the heat released from an explosion within the condensation funnel of a tornado would lead to a dramatic increase in saturation vapor pressure, thus decreasing the humidity in the vicinity of the funnel. You’re not adding more moisture to the equation, so all you’re doing is increasing temperature and increasing the air’s capacity to hold water — exponentially. All else equal, you’ve decreased humidity, and because the air is no longer saturated, the condensation funnel (which you see when the air is saturated) visually disappears.
If the condensation funnel is our visual cue of a tornado and it disappears, then to the human mind the tornado itself has disappeared. So you can actually blow up a tornado, right? Not quite. Other videos from other angles that I’ve seen seem to show the condensation funnel picking back up a little after the viral video ends. Meaning the tornado was only briefly visually disrupted, not destroyed. Were the winds disrupted or just our visual cues? I’m not sure. Thunderstorms are big, and the forces producing tornadoes are also significant. To truly destroy a tornado, you’d likely have to go after the supercell thunderstorm itself, which is producing the tornado, in theory perhaps something that could be done but in practice probably next to impossible.
While it’s certainly a fun thought exercise, also keep in mind that we’re all taking some liberties here to make assumptions about this using the science that we know. There could be another explanation for what’s happening here, but the one suggested by Reed and others seems to be the most reasonable that I’ve seen. But the bigger point still stands: Blowing up a tornado is not a practical alternative to preparedness, structure hardening, shelter availability, and awareness on severe weather days.
Excellent explanation and an honest disclaimer. Cannot do much better than that.
Well done, again.
As an emergency manager, I especially like your comment, “…not to mention the likelihood of collateral damage.” We don’t blow up tornadoes. We don’t blow up ice jams. We don’t spray water on lava flows to divert them. We often try to build levees and seawalls to disrupt floods and hurricanes, but we usually just end up giving people a false sense of security and creating a worse situation when those works fail. Simply put, we can’t control nature and the risk of doing more harm than good is real when we are dealing with the magnitude of forces necessary to take on natural Earth processes.
There’s an excellent writer named John McPhee who wrote a book entitled just that: The Control of Nature. Among other things he writes about an incident in Iceland where they did exactly that to a volcanic eruption: used spraying water to divert the lava so it wouldn’t destroy their harbor.
(You might also be surprised to know what the US Army Corps of Engineers has been doing with the Mississippi River for more than half a century now.)
I’m not a scientist, mathematician, physicist, meteorologist…just an old Navy pilot that has studied weather phenomena for years as required to be able to safely fly the friendly (and ofttimes unfriendly) skies. Matt’s article was an outstanding layman-level explanation of a weather phenomena so that many, if not most of the SCW readers, can at least appreciate, if not understand some of the weather science about scary weather events. I’ve never dissected a tornado and was unaware that the visual funnel was condensation. I’m not sure what I thought it was other than earth junk—dirt, trees, small animals, houses, cars…….which begs another question. Within the “eye” (assuming there is one) of a tornado, is there a vacuum or sucking up of air so that things are lofted into vortex, or are they just flung out and up by wind and centrifugal force? Thinking about the movie, TWISTER, where the “chasers” deployed their “flying” sensors based on the tornado sucking them up so that they could measure and transmit certain data back to the ground monitors. Or, was that just imagination and movie magic? As a pilot my druthers were to fly when the sky was clear and forever. Didn’t always happen that way, but I tried to avoid thunderstorms by going around or over them. Worked most of the time.
Excellent explanation of the event!
Am I the only one who through of the old Sharknado movies when I first read the headline? 🙂
No! I thought of that, too. I love disaster movies, good and bad, and I’ll be sorely disappointed if I don’t see one about blowing up tornadoes in the near future. 😀
I’m not a scientist, mathematician, physicist, meteorologist…just an old Navy pilot that has studied weather phenomena for years as required to be able to safely fly the friendly (and ofttimes unfriendly) skies. Matt’s article was an outstanding layman-level explanation of a weather phenomena that many, if not most, of the SCW readers can at least appreciate, if not understand, some of the weather science about scary weather events. I’ve never dissected a tornado and was unaware that the visual funnel was condensation. I’m not sure what I thought it was other than earth junk—dirt, trees, small animals, houses, cars, and, perhaps, even cows…….which begs another question. Within the “eye” (assuming there is one) of a tornado, is there a vacuum or sucking up of air so that things are lifted and lofted into the vortex, or are they just flung out and up by wind and centrifugal force? Thinking about the movie, TWISTER, where the “chasers” deployed their “flying” sensors based on the tornado sucking them up so that they could measure and transmit certain data back to the ground monitors. Or, was that just imagination and movie magic? As a pilot my druthers were to fly when the sky was clear and forever. Didn’t always happen that way, but I tried to avoid thunderstorms by going around or over them. Worked most of the time.