Do tornadoes really skip?
Not in a literal sense, despite what you may have read in many older references, news stories, or even damage survey reports. By definition (above), a tornado must be in contact with the ground. There is disagreement in meteorology over whether or not multiple touchdowns of the same vortex or funnel cloud mean different tornadoes (a strict interpretation). In either event, stories of skipping tornadoes usually mean • There was continuous contact between vortex and ground in the path, but it was too weak to do damage; • Multiple tornadoes happened; but there was no survey done to precisely separate their paths (very common before the 1970s); or • There were multiple tornadoes with only short separation, but the survey erroneously classified them as one tornado.
