Tornado vs. Whirlwind

Tornadonoun

(meteorology) A violent windstorm characterized by a mobile, twisting, funnel-shaped cloud.

‘A tornado is a rotating column of air, pendant from a cumulonimbus cloud, and nearly always observable as a funnel cloud or tuba. Its vortex, meters in diameter, rotates counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere, with wind speeds of 160 to more than 480 kilometres per hour.’;

Whirlwindnoun

A violent windstorm of limited extent, as the tornado, characterized by an inward spiral motion of the air with an upward current in the center; a vortex of air. It usually has a rapid progressive motion.

Tornadonoun

A violent whirling wind; specifically (Meteorol.), a tempest distinguished by a rapid whirling and slow progressive motion, usually accompaned with severe thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain, and commonly of short duration and small breadth; a small cyclone.

Whirlwindnoun

(figuratively) A person or body of objects or events sweeping violently onward.

‘The weeks leading up to the convention were a whirlwind of preparation and hurried activity.’; ‘Once he got that new scooter he turned into a whirlwind and damaged all the flowers.’;

Tornadonoun

a localized and violently destructive windstorm occurring over land characterized by a funnel-shaped cloud extending toward the ground

Whirlwindadjective

Rapid and minimal: a whirlwind tour, a whirlwind romance.

Tornadonoun

a purified and potent form of cocaine that is smoked rather than snorted

Whirlwindnoun

A violent windstorm of limited extent, as the tornado, characterized by an inward spiral motion of the air with an upward current in the center; a vortex of air. It usually has a rapid progressive motion.

‘The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods.And drowns the villages.’;

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. The windstorm is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology to name a weather system with a low-pressure area in the center around which, from an observer looking down toward the surface of the earth, winds blow counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern.

Whirlwindnoun

Fig.: A body of objects sweeping violently onward.

Whirlwindnoun

a more or less vertical column of air whirling around itself as it moves over the surface of the Earth

Whirlwind

A whirlwind is a weather phenomenon in which a vortex of wind (a vertically oriented rotating column of air) forms due to instabilities and turbulence created by heating and flow (current) gradients. Whirlwinds occur all over the world and in any season.