Tornado in the USA

More than 270 dead, swept away rows of houses overturned, cars: A series of deadly tornadoes swept across the southern United States, whole areas are in ruins. Here, the storm season, there has only just begun.

Trail of destruction: the southern United States has once again been rocked by deadly tornadoes. The heavy storms from Texas to Tennessee covered by houses, overturned cars and bend to let power poles like matchsticks. 

A tornado (Spanish tornar "repent, turn, turn, participle tornado; tornear" spinning lathe, "), also Großtrombe, wind-or water-spout in the U.S. called colloquially Twister is a small-scale vortices in Earth's atmosphere, one nearly vertical rotational axis and in the context of convective clouds (cumulus and cumulonimbus) is what makes the difference to whirlwinds (dust devils). The vortex extends here continuously from the floor to the clouds. This definition of Alfred Wegener (1917) and is back in this form recognized today or in general.

The terms wind and water pants (English: Waterspout) described in the German-speaking one Großtrombe (Tornado in the broader sense) over land or major water bodies (sea, large inland lakes). Tornado is a synonym for a tornado in thethe narrower sense,that is over land .

The term "whirlwind"- in the older literature is well defined yet (Wegener) - In the recent past, increasingly indiscriminate use of various phenomena associated with sudden high winds (for example, downburst) or based on false whirlwind. Moreover, the impression of a difference between "large" Tornadoes in North America and "small" wind pants in Europe, was awakened. One difference between tornadoes and tornadoes, however, neither in terms of their physical nature or terms of their strength.