The strongest winds in tornadoes are very near the ground

Tornadoes contain some of the strongest winds on earth, causing death and damage when impacting man-made and natural objects, such as buildings and trees. Quantifying tornado winds near the surface is critical to characterizing tornado hazards. Direct measurements of tornado winds are rare and are usually obtained at least >100 m above the ground, well above building height, by proximate mobile radars. The representativeness of these mobile radar-obtained measurements to wind speeds closer to the surface is unknown. Here we analyze rare, low-level mobile radar observations of 73 different tornadoes to demonstrate that the strongest winds in tornadoes generally occur very near the ground. Therefore, even proximate radar measurements at >100 m above the ground usually substantially underestimate actual tornado wind intensity.

Karen Kosiba, Joshua Wurman