The Weather Notebook: Listener Question: Singing Tornadoes

Listener Question: Singing Tornadoes
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Dave Thurlow, Host

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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, we have a listener question about singing, about singing tornadoes. Here's David Mitchell, a listener of affiliate station KVNO in Omaha, NE:

"A neighbor across the street said that he saw something recently saying that a researcher had discovered that tornadoes emit a frequency or somewhere around 60,000 hertz when they're in the vicinity. Well, I'm enough of a physicist to know that a 60,000 hertz has a wavelength of about 1/3 of an inch. There's something a little bit wrong with what I heard.

So, the question is; do tornadoes sing at around 60,000 hertz which would be well above of course what I could hear and maybe my cat could hear it and that's the reason my cat gets very upset when thunderstorms are around. Thanks a lot."

That's such a great question it 'hertz'. One hertz equals one cycle per second of a sound wave. The more hertz, the higher the sound. The less hertz, the lower the sound.

Tornado researcher Alfred Bedard has found that tornadoes emit a frequency of like 1 or 2 hertz, which is much too low for us to hear. But it can be measured. By making tiny tornadoes in the lab, Bedard found what tornadoes sound like from a distance, something that will help predict real twisters several minutes to an hour before they strike.

So, yes David, tornadoes do sing, but I'm not sure what they're favorite song is.

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