Tornado vs. Vortex

Tornadonoun

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

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.

Tornadonoun

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

Tornadonoun

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

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.

Vortexnoun

A whirlwind, whirlpool, or similarly moving matter in the form of a spiral or column.

Vortexnoun

(figuratively) Anything that involves constant violent or chaotic activity around some centre.

Vortexnoun

(figuratively) Anything that inevitably draws surrounding things into its current.

Vortexnoun

(historical) A supposed collection of particles of very subtle matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or planet; part of a Cartesian theory accounting for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it.

Vortexnoun

(zoology) Any of numerous species of small Turbellaria belonging to Vortex and allied genera.

Vortexnoun

A mass of fluid, especially of a liquid, having a whirling or circular motion tending to form a cavity or vacuum in the center of the circle, and to draw in towards the center bodies subject to its action; the form assumed by a fluid in such motion; a whirlpool; an eddy.

Vortexnoun

A supposed collection of particles of very subtile matter, endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which was also the axis of a sun or a planet. Descartes attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortices.

Vortexnoun

Any one of numerous species of small Turbellaria belonging to Vortex and allied genera. See Illustration in Appendix.

Vortexnoun

the shape of something rotating rapidly

Vortexnoun

a powerful circular current of water (usually the resulting of conflicting tides)

Vortexnoun

a whirling mass of fluid or air, especially a whirlpool or whirlwind

Vortex

In fluid dynamics, a vortex (plural vortices/vortexes) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in the wake of a boat, and the winds surrounding a tropical cyclone, tornado or dust devil.