Last Saturday (27), a tornado surprised residents of the rural area of the municipality of São Martinho da Serra, located in the center of Rio Grande do Sul.
Videos taken by residents recorded the moment when the tornado advanced over crops and passed through the headquarters of a rural property, causing significant damage.
The phenomenon occurred on a day of great atmospheric instability in Rio Grande do Sul, due to the movement of a cold front through the state.
This resulted in heavy and intense rain, with volumes approaching 200 mm on the border with Uruguay, as well as hail and some isolated gales.
An example of this was in Santa Cruz do Sul, where hundreds of houses had their roofs damaged.
According to meteorologist Estael Sias, from MetSul, the atmospheric conditions were extremely favorable for the formation of this type of phenomenon.
She highlighted that, in the morning, satellite images showed instability over the state with the shape of an inverted letter ‘v’, which is characteristic of great divergence in the atmosphere.
Estael explained that a low-level jet stream was acting over Rio Grande do Sul, causing strong winds in the north of the state in the morning and high temperatures, reaching 34ºC in the northwest in the afternoon.
“When this low-level jet stream is acting and a cold front advances, a situation is created in which the winds blow in divergent directions in the lower part of the atmosphere, favoring the formation of tornadoes,” he said.
The tornado’s passage through the rural area of São Martinho da Serra left no injuries, but it caused damage to a rural establishment, where the strong wind associated with the tornado ripped open a shed and caused other minor damage.
Tornadoes are extreme and destructive meteorological phenomena characterized by intensely rotating columns of air that extend from the base of a storm to the Earth’s surface.
These violent whirlpools are known for their devastating ability, capable of causing great destruction in a matter of seconds to minutes.
The Fujita scale, which is often used to rate the intensity of tornadoes, ranges from F0 to F5, with F5 being the most powerful.
These events often form in areas where masses of warm, moist air meet masses of cold, dry air, creating ideal conditions for these vortices to develop.
Tornadoes occur in many parts of the world, including Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and South America.
Even New Zealand reports about 20 tornadoes a year.
Two of the largest concentrations of tornadoes outside the United States occur in mid-latitude South America and Bangladesh.
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