Pat Krautkremer, age 10, of Papillion, Neb., for her question:
Is it true that tornadoes never strike in a valley?
When the Weather Bureau warns that a tornado is headed your way, run for the storm cellar. If you live on the wide open prairies, scoot to shelter as fast as you can. If you live in the valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio or lower Missouri rivers, run even faster.
A tornado is a wild. Whirlwind on a rampage. It is a smallish weather event, but no other storm can equal its furious powers of destruction. And the tornado, also called the twister or the cyclone, strikes suddenly. Even our best weather information can give only short notice of its approach. Weather experts, however, know when conditions are likely to produce these wild storms, and people in tornado territory are then alerted. No sensible person wastes a moment when warned that a tornado is about to strike. He hurries to the cyclone cellar or to some other nearby tornado shelter.
Every year North America is struck by perhaps 500 of these dusty storm funnels. They strike most often in the midwestern states, but they also occur once in a while in other states. The major tornado territory is crossed by the great Mississippi and Ohio rivers and by the lower Missouri. There are other rivers also, and all these rivers meander through valleys of their own making.
Much of our tornado territory is flat plain and prairie land, and we tend to think that the nasty little twisters avoid the valleys. But this is far from the truth. It is a very dangerous notion to keep in mind when tornado alerts are announced. Peop1e in the valleys are. No safer than those on the plains. If they refuse to take shelter because they assume that the twister will not strike their va11ey, they are foolishly risking their lives.
Tornado strikes have been charted through more than 50 years. On an average, each 17,000 square mile area of tornado territory gets one strike a year. And most of the strikes are in river valleys. Once in a while old Andy makes a request and now is the time. Please tell your friends and relatives that twisters strike both plains and Valleys, and when the warning sounds not a moment should be wasted going to a shelter.
Tornadoes breed in cold fronts along squall lines where weather conditions are unsettled and stormy. Several of the dusky funnels may dip down from a blustery cloud, a and one of them may touch the ground. Its weaving path may be/quarter mile wide and 100 yards to 100 mi1es long. It may plow a path of destruction through a town in minutes. Its central winds may whirl at 300 to 400 or 500 miles an hour, but we cannot give their exact speed because no wind instrument can endure through them.