NZ Weather Forum

If tornado wind speeds are 80km/h does that mean the speed of the tornado is the same or different?

- This has been bugging me for a while now, not sure if its an obvious answer but I was thinking of tracking the speed/distance covered by a tornado.


Also is there any websites that contain real knowledgeable information about tornadoes and not basic sites. I just need some more sites to throughly inspect and learn more.

I myself have found this website very helpful to help classify and read the clouds a lot better.

https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/home.html
https://www.weather.gov/

A tornado (the whirly thing that looks like a funnel from a distance) can move at any speed - typically it will move at the same speed as the cloud which has spawned it, and that is usually being blown along by what we might call the prevailing winds at the time (anywhere between 10 and 100kmh I suppose). Talking about the "wind speeds" inside a tornado is not particularly useful I feel, as its a rotational wind, so trying to assign it a straight-line wind speed is not really very valid, although I suppose its a way of making it more easily relatable for people. There is a huge pressure change inside and across a tornado, and the "wind speed" is related to the strength of the pressure vortex.