These only happen in the US due to warm air coming from the Gulf of Mexico meeting cold air coming down from Canada. This combination causing storms across rage South and the Midwest. Do they happen anywhere else with the ferocity they happen in the US.

I know we have had tornados here but they are pretty rare.

We get them here.

About ten years ago there was terror and panic in Harrogate when one tore part of the roof off a shed.

true story.

I think they get water spouts around the Pacific rim.

Nope, they happen all over the planet.

Googles yer friend.

Similar storms go by different names elsewhere in the world, eg Typhoon.

You’re wrong but they are more common in parts of America for the reason you describe.

I think they get water spouts around the Pacific rim.

Those crazy Japanese and their fancy toilets. What will they think of next?

A typhoon is a bit different. In common with hurricanes and cyclones, typhoons develop in the lower atmosphere over tropical warm oceans, are many miles across and last for days. Tornados can form over the land or water from higher in the atmosphere are relatively narrow and short lived. The wind speed in a tornado can be much higher than a typhoon/hurricane/cyclone.

I saw one years ago whilst playing junior cricket at Sowerby Bridge. It just hung there for ages, but didn’t touch down so no damage

We do get them in Europe.
This website can be quite addictive and has a nice FaceBook feed
http://www.severe-weather.eu/category/notable-events/

They only happen in the US cos the CIA has built a massive machine that makes them. Or something like that.

Oh..that my morning gone.

I know we have had tornados here but they are pretty rare.

Oddly enough the UK is reckoned to have the most per area.
Just they are on smaller scale and hence mostly unnoticed.
Uk tornados

We get the – farnboroughs had a few: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7010172.stm

Witnessed two just of the Amalfi coast when I was hiking above Positano, got a great photo of them with a boat in the foreground cutting a hasty u-turn in the water!

You get them (I think) when eddies, rotating bits of air get dragged down by various effects and start to spin faster, kind of like eddy whirlpools in water.

The middle of the US has these conflicting air masses as you describe that cause these huge supercell thunderstorms which rotate, and heavy rain from them causes the downdraught that creates tornados. Most of the literature on tornados seems to describe this process but I don’t think that’s how we get them here. Seems to occur here with high energy fronts with lots of heavy rain.