Temple University physics professor Rongjia Tao studies Tornado Alley. He is posing the question about whether major tornado threats can be eliminated.
He proposes building three great, enormous walls. The walls would rise 1,000 feet and be 150 feet wide. They would be placed from east to west across Tornado Alley including one along the Kansas and Oklahoma border.
Tao says because we have no mountains ranging from east to west the storms have room to grow.
"The strong wind changes direction and increases in speed and height," he said. "As a result, it creates a supercell, violent vortex, an invisible horizontal spinning motion in the lower atmosphere. When the air tilts the spinning air from horizontal to vertical, tornadoes with radii of miles are formed and cause tremendous damage."
In addition to the wall south of Wichita, he suggests a wall in North Dakota and a wall in south Texas and Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico. Doing so, he says, "will diminish the tornado threats in Tornado Alley forever."
