Tornado Line-Up Drawing Worksheet
Six tornadoes side by side under one long storm cloud, from EF0 to EF5, each bigger than the last. Dotted funnels give students a start. The rest is theirs: the dust, the debris, and anything in the way.
Download the worksheet (PDF)What students do
- Draw a tornado for each rating on the EF scale, from the weakest to the strongest.
- See each one’s wind speed and how wide a tornado of that rating often is.
- Add what a tornado does: dust, flying debris, and whatever stands in its path.
- Learn one surprise: the widest tornado ever measured was only an EF3.
How to use it
This is a drawing sheet, not a measuring one. The dotted funnels grow from left to right, but they are not drawn to scale, and there is no answer key. It suits a child who already loves tornadoes, and it works as a first page before the draw the damage worksheet or the tornado EF scale book.
Where the numbers come from
Wind speeds are the Enhanced Fujita scale used by the United States National Weather Service. The widths are the middle (median) width of every tornado of each rating recorded in the United States from 2007 to 2023, worked out from the Storm Prediction Center’s tornado records: about 150, 375, 900, 1,800, 2,700 feet, and about a mile for an EF5. The rating itself comes from damage, not size, which is why a very wide tornado can still be an EF3.
The book that goes with it
