Noun

(en-noun)

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

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-03

, author=Frank Fish, George Lauder , title=Not Just Going with the Flow , volume=101, issue=2, page=114 , magazine= citation , passage=An extreme version of vorticity is a vortex . The vortex is a spinning, cyclonic mass of fluid, which can be observed in the rotation of water going down a drain, as well as in smoke rings, tornados and hurricanes.}}

A tornado is a rotating column of air, pendant from a cumulonimbus cloud, and nearly always observable as a funnel cloud or tuba. Its vortex, meters in diameter, rotates counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere, with wind speeds of 160 to more than 480 kilometres per hour.

Noun

(en noun)

A storm, especially one with severe winds.

* 1847 , (Herman Melville), Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas , ch. 16:

As every sailor knows, a spicy gale in the tropic latitudes of the Pacific is far different from a tempest in the howling North Atlantic.

*{{quote-book, year=1892, author=(James Yoxall)

, chapter=5, title= The Lonely Pyramid , passage=The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom.

Any violent tumult or commotion.

* 1914 , (Ambrose Bierce), "One Officer, One Man":

They awaited the word "forward"—awaited, too, with beating hearts and set teeth the gusts of lead and iron that were to smite them at their first movement in obedience to that word. The word was not given; the tempest did not break out.

(label) A fashionable social gathering; a drum.

(Smollett)