A skipping tornado is a process
tornado
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...
(or a series of tornadoes) which has a discontinuous damage path.
There are several possible causes for this phenomenon:
# The tornado actually lifting from the surface (which technically may make the two damage paths separate tornadoes)
# The tornado passing over a portion of land where there are no structures or vegetation (i.e. damage indicators) capable of showing damage
# The tornado temporarily weakening so that the winds are below the damage threshold of the structures or vegetation being affected.
Historically, skipping referred to the breaks in the damage path of what was considered as a single longer track tornado. With the discovery of
cyclic tornadogenesis with some
supercell
A supercell is a thunderstorm characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone: a deep, persistently rotating updraft. Due to this, these storms are sometimes referred to as rotating thunderstorms. Of the four classifications of thunderstorms ( ...
thunderstorms, it was learned that successive tornadoes form with new
mesocyclone
A mesocyclone is a meso-gamma mesoscale (or storm scale) region of rotation (vortex), typically around in diameter, most often noticed on radar within thunderstorms. In the northern hemisphere it is usually located in the right rear flank (back ...
s and the resulting series of tornadoes is referred to as a
tornado family
A tornado family is a series of tornadoes spawned by the same supercell thunderstorm. These families form a line of successive or parallel tornado paths and can cover a short span or a vast distance. Tornado families are sometimes mistaken as a si ...
. Especially when a tornado is first developing there may be small gaps in damage due to the circulation briefly ceasing at the surface or becoming too weak to cause damage even as the parent mesocyclone (and possibly a tornadic circulation aloft) is continuous and this is typically, but not always, considered a single tornado. In these cases, usually only tornadoes emanating from new mesocyclones (i.e. new tornadogenesis cycle and new
wall cloud
A wall cloud (murus or pedestal cloud) is a large, localized, persistent, and often abrupt lowering of cloud that develops beneath the surrounding base of a cumulonimbus cloud and from which tornadoes sometimes form. It is typically beneath the r ...
) are counted as a separate tornado. Before it was recognized that tornadoes can be
multivortex, the phenomenon of subvortices also caused confusion both during a tornado and for surveying damage paths.
Some forms of tornadoes, again especially in the process of formation prior to congealing their wind fields, may be multivortex tornadoes with dispersed subvortices with subdamaging wind in the intervening space within the larger circulation, which can give the appearance of skipping.
See also
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Funnel cloud
A funnel cloud is a funnel-shaped cloud of condensed water droplets, associated with a rotating column of wind and extending from the base of a cloud (usually a cumulonimbus or towering cumulus cloud) but not reaching the ground or a water su ...
*
Tornado intensity and damage
Tornado intensity can be measured by ''in situ'' or remote sensing measurements, but since these are impractical for wide-scale use, intensity is usually inferred by proxies, such as damage. The Fujita scale, Enhanced Fujita scale, and the Int ...
*
Satellite tornado
A satellite tornado is a tornado that revolves around a larger, primary tornado and interacts with the same mesocyclone. Satellite tornadoes occur apart from the primary tornado and are not considered subvortices; the primary tornado and satellit ...
References
Tornado trends over the past thirty years (PDF)
Tornado
Tornadogenesis
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