A Tornado (severe windstorm) that developed some 20 kilometres north of Sialkot City, hit five villages near Head Marala on Saturday evening. The estimated wind speed of the Tornado was 200 miles per hour.
According to Met Office Tornado (also know as Twister) is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and low clouds (normally with the base of a cumulus cloud). The wind speed of Tornados range from 110 mph to 300 mph (177-480 km/hr) within a radius of 3 kilometres.
Tornado can stay/travel over the ground (earth) for more than 50 kilometres with an average life of 15-45 minutes. Tornado is a natural disaster of mid/higher latitudes, mostly develop in United States of America.
Met office said that due to rapidly changing climate, three such Tornados have been observed in the plain areas of upper Punjab during the last decade, including Chak-Misraan (near Sargodha) on 28th March 2001, Chaklala (Rawalpindi) on 12th October 2006, and recent one at Head Marala (near Sialkot).
In Pakistan such Tornados normally develop during the transition period of two rainy seasons (Monsoon and Winter) due to high temperature contrast between day and night. The severe damaging winds, thundershowers and hails are associated with Tornados.
Met Office further informed that Tornado is a micro-climatic phenomenon and the prediction of a Tornado even in the World is very difficult by the existing forecasting techniques, including numerical weather predictions.
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