Tornadoes Outside The U.S.

[Stuart Robinson]

"The English have a different definition of tornado tho, it seems to me like they count gustnados and even strong dust devils. IF you look at their tornado strength scale, it is really broad in its definition. "

Hello Richard,

I have to correct you on this point - since 1974 we have tried to record all vortex events that have occoured within the UK and of course this includes dust devils / gustnados etc and such like - our reseach - backed up with site investigations leads us to conclude that over the last 30 years we can expect on adverage 33 tornados per year in the UK - these are confirmed tornados!

I do belive however that further studies over the next 30 years will show that the NL in Europe to be a hot spot as well as South Germany.

Overall given the correct conditions a tornado will form anyware on the globe.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

I don't think there is competition there. Canada would get more large tornadoes than Australia. Australia gets alot of big summertime supercells but these as a general rule do not produce tornadoes.
Many of the tornado reports come from weaker convection in cold troughs crossing the southern parts of the country.

Oh, I was just assuming that Canada and Australia had about the same amount of tornadoes. How often does that part of the world see tornadoes? It's interesting you note cold troughs being the main tornado culprit... does Australia get sea breeze front generated storms that end up becoming tornadic? Here in southern Ontario, if it's a good storm day, most of our storms will fire up along lake breeze fronts and produce a landspout/tornado or two. We don't get many supercells here.

 

[Steven Williams]

Does New Zealand get violent thunderstorms/tornadic storms, and if so, how often?

I think our interpretation of 'violent' would be quite different to the US.
New Zealand being a temperate maritime region generaly has a low CAPE storm environment so thunderstorms tend to be quite weak compared to continental regions. The New Zealand tornado environment would be on par with the UK. They tend to be F0-F1 and occur mainly within cold advection.

 

[Michael Thompson]

This will not endear me to my fellow contemporaries - but I would personally place Australia well down the list - after Bangladesh and Argentina, and possibly Canada.

I have been chasing for well over 20 years and in that time I have seen several funnel clouds and one very weak tornado. I cannot be that unlucky, the reality is our supercell days just lack essential ingredients. We get the downbursts, large hail and flash floods, but lack the tornadoes.

When asked by non chasers about Australian tornadoes my reply is " We get more than most people realise, but far less than most of my fellow chasers believe".

In the past I blamed the lack of cold hard tornado encounters to our poor road network, our chasing countryside of trees and hills , our lack of population. These are factors, but the reality is the tornadoes are simply not here in the numbers that you get in the USA,

So what are some of the reasons ?

Lack of low level moisture - there is often moisture hanging around at surface but all often very thin and with little feed. Go to 800mb and the wind has already swung a dry NW,

Upside down moisture profiles. In spring moist middle to upper winds from the Indian Ocean drag in lots of moisture and associated middle and upper cloud bands. ( whilst the lower lowers are parched )

Weak Wind Shear profiles, following from point one low level winds are rarely strong.

No warm fronts and you rarely see an occluded front on a Aussi chart.

However none of this will stop me chasing over here. I love the rumble of thunder, the flash of lightning, the ding of hail as it hits your car, a great sunset and sinply just being on the road driving through countryside that I have not visited before.