Mythical monsters have haunted our nightmares for millennia, instilling fear with their enormous size, malicious behavior, and utterly destructive powers. For countless centuries, humanity has invented these creatures to explain the mysteries of the world. A colossus makes the earth tremble with every step he takes. Charybdis of Greek mythology opened his giant mouth and sucked water from the sea and spat it back three times a day, thus creating the tides, but also destroying everything that remained trapped in the vortex that was created. The most ferocious creatures tear homes, communities and lives apart. Very few troubles can match these beasts of our imagination, except when the forces of nature are unleashed upon the world in the form of earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes and volcanoes, the most destructive and widespread of which is the tornado.A tornado. it is a violently rotating pillar of air that extends from a cumulonimbus cloud to the planet's surface. They usually appear funnel-shaped, although they can be seen in a multitude of different sizes and shapes. While most tornadoes have wind speeds less than 112 miles per hour and are, on average, about 250 feet in diameter, the most severe storms can peak at over 300 miles per hour and several miles wide. Often, in medium-sized tornadoes, the tornado remains in contact with the ground for only a few miles, but the most intense ones can travel more than 50 miles. Although every continent on Earth except Antarctica has reported cases of these frightening phenomena, the United States encounters the most of them, usually in the southeastern region that has been nicknamed "Tornado Alley." ... half the paper ...... compared to its size. While it is true that larger storms can affect a larger area due to their size, this does not mean that the wind speed is greater than smaller ones. In fact, since 1950, over 100 tornadoes rated EF4 have been no wider than 300 feet. A third fable states that twisters are attracted to mobile homes and trailer parks. This is perpetuated by the news media because, when they are hit, the news tends to focus on them because, often, they are where the greatest number of victims are recorded because such houses are not built to withstand the savagery. of storms as more permanent structures. Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_myths http://www.gods-and-monsters.com/charybdis.html http://www .ready.gov/tornadoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_intensity_and_damage