Tornado hits London, how very strange… or not as it may seem. The U.K. does experience tornados, last July one hit Birmingham damaging a thousand buildings, last October one was reported off Brighton and only last Tuesday a mini-tornado travelled through the village of Ceredigion, West Wales. Overall forty tornados have been reported this year.
The U.K is particularly susceptible to tornados because of its position on the Atlantic, polar air from the North, meets tropical air from the south. This meeting of air causes unstable conditions that leads to the formation of Tornados.
The tornado this morning, that lasted only forty seconds, injured six people and damaged hundred and fifty properties, no actually video of the funnel yet; though this tornado characteristic may not always be visible.
I’m going to look at this tomorrow with Key Stage 3, none of them watch the news, so shouldn’t be a problem. :( I truly believe that the Geography curriculum should be responsive to these events.The B.B.C has some footage of the aftermath and a gallery of images. I’ve used some of the images to create a photo montage as a starter, I can imagine students coming up with a number of reasons for the devastation, I’m betting that an act of terrorism will be amongst them. I’m then going to show some footage, hopefully recorded from the B.B.C Ten O’clock News. After a brief discussion, using an animation of how tornados form and the B.B.C weather report from the day, I’ve going to read this article from the Guardian, whilst students produce an ‘eyewitness’ annotated diagram of the disaster. Come to think of it, I might read the article, then get students to produced their diagram, before showing the footage, this will enable a comparison. The Guardian also has a nice little article on how tornados work!
Update- The B.B.C now has a nice little descriptive acount by Lee Quinn, which I think I’ll use for my exercise.
So, the Pilot link, is this evidence of global warming, or just a freak weather event?
If you have the morning papers, please bring any newspaper articles for the Geography board. 
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Posted in General
Written on Thu, 07 December 2006 at 8:25 pm
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December 9th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
[...] Early in the week I wrote an article on my lesson about the London Tornado, the lesson went very well and hopefully I’ll post some of the results next week, between mock marking. Today Sarah Chadwick sent me a mystery which colleagues might find useful… Thank you Sarah. Listen to this podcast [...]