A violently rotating column of air that extends from the base of a thunderstorm to the ground, capable of wind speeds exceeding 300 miles per hour in the most extreme cases. Tornadoes form most readily within supercell thunderstorms where strong vertical wind shear tilts a horizontally spinning air mass into a vertical funnel, and are ranked by the damage they cause on the Enhanced Fujita scale. The United States' Tornado Alley sees more tornadoes than anywhere else on Earth, owing to the collision of warm Gulf moisture with cold, dry continental air.
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A tornado is defined as a funnel cloud, or its associated ground-level circulation, that makes contact with the earth's surface; the two describe the same rotating column at different stages of one event.
Tropical cyclones commonly spawn tornadoes within their rainbands, particularly in the quadrant ahead and to the right of the storm's track, a well-documented secondary hazard of landfalling cyclones.
A wall cloud is the lowered, often rotating cloud base beneath a supercell thunderstorm from which many tornadoes descend, and is used operationally as a warning sign of tornado formation.
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