Do tornados hit the top of hills?
Yes, tornadoes can hit the tops of hills. Tornadoes have even been known to traverse across the sides of mountains and remain mainly intact. So your son is incorrect, tornadoes can and do hit the tops of hills. This is from the National Severe Storm Laboratory: Do rocks, hills, or trees increase or decrease the wind speeds in a tornado? -Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. Both observations (of real tornadoes), computer simulations, and laboratory studies (in tornado vortex chambers) have shown that the “surface roughness”, i.e., the measure of how disrupted the wind near the ground is by objects such as dirt, rocks, hills, trees, and even houses, can either increase or decrease the wind speeds in a tornado. How can trees increase the wind speeds? Well, the strongest winds in a tornado occur when air from outside the tornado can flow closest to the center of the vortex. The conservation of angular momentum, e.g., the rotation in the air, requires that as the air flows toward the c
