An Artificial Tornado Rips the Roof Off of a Small Model House Inside a High-Tech Wind Chamber

New Scientist captured video of an artificially generated tornado tearing the roof off of a small model of a house inside a hexagonal wind chamber at the WindEEE Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. The wind tunnel is capable of creating a highly controllable tornado for testing purposes.

We can create a 5-metre-wide tornado inside the chamber. A tornado is a combination of rotation and suction. By angling the airflow from the fans around the lower chamber we control the rotation of a tornado vortex, and we create the suction by running the six huge fans in reverse. The beauty of our tornado is that we can move it along the ground at 2 metres per second.