Why don tornadoes hit big cities?
Tornadoes do hit such areas. But, as you can see when you take an airplane trip anywhere in the U.S., built-up areas make up only a small part of the country. Tornadoes are small compared with other kinds of storms and are really pretty rare. The odds are that they will hit open land more often than cities because there is a lot of open land. Also, some of the most built-up parts of the U.S. such as the Northeast Coast and along the California Coast are places where strong tornadoes are rare because the general weather conditions aren’t as favorable as they are in the Southeast, on the Plains and in the Midwest. The tornado myths section (second question down) on the Tornado Project on the Web site has more information.
