WELD COUNTY, Colo. — It's not something you want to see out of the window of your airplane: a tornado.
That's what Adrienne Vonn, a meteorologist for Spectrum News 1 Texas saw Monday as her plane approached the Denver airport.
In her Tweet she says, " Never had this happen before. Got a tornado warning on my phone during my flight. Looked out the window and saw this. Safely on the ground now at @DENAirport #cowx."
KUSA says the tornado appeared to be a landspout. That means it forms on the ground because of colliding air boundaries during the initial growth stage of a thunderstorm. The TV station says unlike a typical tornado, landspouts form near the ground and move toward the cloud.
KUSA says these are common in eastern Colorado because of frequently colliding air boundaries. Landspouts, according to KUSA, seem to come out of nowhere.
Some waterspouts in Florida can be similar to landspouts.
Fair weather waterspouts form during relatively calm weather. They typically form in a line of developing cumulus clouds. Air begins to circulate at the surface of the water and develops upward toward the cloud.
Tornadic waterspouts are basically tornadoes that form over water or move from land to water. They typically occur with active thunderstorms. Unlike fair weather waterspouts, tornadic waterspouts usually develop downward from a thunderstorm. These can often appear initially as funnel clouds.
As for tornadoes on land, Florida ranks very high in the country in terms of the number of tornadoes it sees each year. However, most of Florida's tornadoes are of the weaker variety. Florida ranks among the lowest in tornadoes categorized as severe or extremely dangerous, more often rated EF-0 or EF-1.
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