No one would believe that driving in circles could create a tornado, but let’s let the experts answer that.
The internet is often a place for surprising questions, and recently, a video that has been widely shared raised the question: Can vehicles moving in a circular motion create a tornado?
Can vehicles moving in a circular motion create a tornado?
This question stems from an old video that has recently gained attention. It features a clip from a Pennsylvania news program several years ago, where a man angrily called in to blame the circular driving around a roundabout for creating air turbulence and generating a tornado. Of course, he was mistaken; his voice sounded irritable and perhaps a bit tipsy, but is there really any chance of such a phenomenon occurring?
Weather expert Dennis Mersereau was asked about this, and here’s what he had to say:
“Haha, that’s a great question! I love it.
Cars will never be able to create a tornado. Tornadoes start with rotating air in a thunderstorm and extend down to the ground.
You can create a dust devil, starting from the ground and moving upward. However, cars cannot generate it by driving in circles. Even with trucks, you wouldn’t have the concentrated rotation necessary to initiate that small-scale air movement.
If you’re wealthy, have a lot of free time on a hot day, and are quite lucky, you could drive a truck or a tractor-trailer to a desert or rocky field and drive really fast to try to create a dust storm.
But you’d need a lot of trucks, perhaps with sails attached, and you’d have to drive in a tight circle with a lot of luck to create a vortex. Even then, the wind from one truck could disrupt the airflow from another and make the air currents too chaotic.
But I’m sorry to say that we cannot create a tornado by driving around a roundabout.”
You probably know that the way tornadoes actually form is entirely different from what the man in the video suggested. However, there are systems similar to artificial tornadoes, such as those from Mercedes-Benz, which are said to be the highest artificial tornadoes in the world.
“It seems they are using blowers and ceiling fans. The wind inside is not more than a few miles per hour. Open a door or perform outside, and the vortex will disappear in an instant,” Mersereau said.
So, as you can guess, cars cannot create tornadoes; it is simply impossible. Even with all the ideal scenarios, with vehicles and drivers specifically trained for this, the best you could hope for is a large dust devil, but certainly not a tornado.
