Taken altogether, countries outside the U.

S.

C.

Around 200 to 300 twisters annually, compared to more than 1200 that strike American soil.

So what makes the US so special To make a tornado, you need just the right mix of ingredients.

Warm, humid air near the ground, cold air higher up in the atmosphere and wind that overlaps while moving at different speeds or directions.

Believe it or not, a few places on earth.

Check all of these boxes, and none compares to the great Plains of the United States, also known as Tornado Alley.

And that's largely thanks to this.

The Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico is actually the warmest body of water on Earth at its latitude, and when it comes to making tornadoes, the warmer the air, the better.

As hot air rises off the gulf, it crawls north across the plains, where it meets air blowing west out of the American Rockies, and when the two come together, they can create a vortex of wind that spins horizontally.

Now, here's where that warm air is key as it rises, as warmer likes to dio.

It tilts part of the tube vertical to form a rotating storm called a super cell, and up to 20% of those supercells spawn tornadoes.

Now you can find these conditions elsewhere in the world so anywhere where you can find, um, warm water.

Uh, that's equator, word of some area that also finds itself down wind of a major mountain chain.

Tornadoes have an elevated risk, I would say.

Take Bangladesh, for example.

Warm, humid air spreads from the Bay of Bengal and travels north, where it overlaps with winds blowing southeast out of the Himalayan mountains.

This produces an average of around six tornadoes each year, including the world's deadliest, which struck in 1989.

It killed 1300 people and injured another 1200 more.

But six tornadoes a year doesn't even come close to the 1200 we see each year in the U.

S.

My goodness, that was a thing of beauty.

And tornadoes don't just strike the U.

S.

During tornado season from March through June in January, for example, we get about 36 of them.

That's because you confined those perfect tornado conditions year round and over a region several times the size of Bangladesh.

But that said, tornadoes are probably not as common in the US as you think.

Most people greatly overestimate how often tornadoes occurring in Tornado Alley E.

If you watch the movie Twister, it's easy to think that every day at four o'clock they sound the alarming to just go underground that really most people who live in Oklahoma have never seen a tornado before.

That's because even in Oklahoma, the tornado capital of the world, thes storms Onley strike the same spot once every 1200 to 1500 years.

On average, tornado winds can reach a whopping 400 kilometers per hour, plenty fast enough to sweep you and everything else off the ground.