Severe and Fascinating Texas Weather

While Texas usually experiences decent weather, it is also prone to awesome and devastating weather:

Some of Texas lies in "Tornado Alley."  The worst on record touched down near Waco in 1953 killing 114 people, injuring 597 people, and causing tremendous property damage.  People in Tornado Alley build storm cellars (like my great grandma had) to shelter during tornados.

Tornados are vortexes of air that touch the ground with winds reaching up to 300mph.  Formation requires a strong cold front meeting with warm air, humidity, and the jet stream.  Extremely low pressure hides in the center causing the air to flow from outside to inside because air flows from high to low pressure.  This particular tornado touched down near Childress.

Hurricanes pound the Texas coast about once a decade.  One hurricane (known as the worst US storm ever) occurred in September 1900 when it passed through Galveston killing at least 6000 people.  Current preparation including seawalls and evacuation allow most hurricanes to pass without claiming human lives.  In fact, former Galveston resident Tiffany Terneny reports most people never even leave the island during hurricanes.

Hurricanes are even larger spinning storms but tend to be less violent than tornados.  Formation require the earth to rotate, sea surface temperatures around 78º, constant winds, high water vapor amounts, and convergence (air rising in a column).  Hurricanes also have an "alley" but it is mostly in the Atlantic Ocean between about 5º and 20º latitude.  The above picture is hurricane Ike.

Most people enjoy watching lightning.  A fake lightning strike cracks at the climax of the play "Texas" showing in Palo Duro Canyon.  The "thunder" from it scares people but natural thunder often relaxes people.  

Lightning usually occurs during thunderstorms.  An electrical charge called the "stepped leader" reaches up from the ground.  Then an opposite charges races down to connect with the leader.  That part of the lightning is visible.  Above is lightning near Austin.
Thunder is caused by the extreme heat of lightning pushing through the atmosphere.  Unfortunately, thunder cannot be seen or I would show a picture.  

Particularly large hailstones--another product of thunderstorms--fall in Texas.  One summer I saw cars parked under highways in Amarillo during hailstorms.  Now I understand with much more clarity that the owner's try to protect their cars from damage this way.

Hail is formed through the marriage of the water cycle and wind.  Updrafts and downdrafts carry frozen droplets of water up and down through the atmosphere.  Every time a droplet passes the freezing level (altitude where air is freezing), a layer of ice is added and this eventually becomes hail.  Above are tennis ball to baseball-sized hailstones near Sunray, Tx.

http://www.city-data.com/states/Texas-Climate.html
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Environment/Images/Natural_Disaster/texasmothershiptornado-748992-lw.jpg
http://ticketcity.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/hurricane_ike_texas.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/landerphotography/3627314791/sizes/z/in/photostream/
http://www.examiner.com/extreme-weather-in-national/sunray-tx-massive-hail-storm-video