Skipping tornado
Encyclopedia
A skipping tornado is a vaguely defined term which refers to a tornado
which has a discontinuous damage path. This may be due to several factors:
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
which has a discontinuous damage path. This may be due to several factors:
- The tornado actually lifting from the surface (which technically makes the two damage paths separate tornadoes)
- The tornado passing over a portion of land where there are no structures or vegetation capable of showing damage
- The tornado temporarily weakening so that the winds are below the damage threshold of the structures or vegetation being affected.