DELAWAREÂ -Â Â Saturday, April 1st consisted of the perfect set up for a strong tornado to form over Delaware. The specific conditions needed for a tornado to develop were all in place Saturday evening.
First of all, there was plenty of moisture available, we had lots of heat from all that afternoon sunshine, and also those very strong winds in place.
All of these ingredients when mixed together act as fuel for storms and when they came together, they created lots of instability in our atmosphere.
One of the main drivers for a tornado is wind shear. Wind shear is essentially a change in wind speed or direction at different levels of the atmosphere.
That is going to create a rotating column of air. The warm air at the surface will then rise very rapidly up into that thunderstorm.
The rising air then feeds that storm to create a vertically rotating column of air. This is what's going to form a wall cloud and eventually drop a funnel cloud.
When the funnel cloud reaches the ground, it becomes a tornado