What's the difference between a hurricane and a tornado? I'm Storm Shield Meteorologist Jason Meyers. They're both a testament to Mother Nature's fury. They both spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere. And they both cause loss of life and property every year. But they're far from the same thing. For one, they form in very different ways. Hurricanes form in warm ocean waters. Moisture evaporates, rises, and begins to circulate. As the storm grows, winds continue to speed up, and eventually, an eye forms around the middle. Tornadoes, on the other hand, spawn from thunderstorms. Rotation in different layers of the atmosphere within a thunderstorm create a funnel cloud that eventually reaches the ground. Neither one of these processes are necessarily superior than the other, so this is a wash. BUT - something we can compare: size. Hurricanes can be hundreds of miles in diameter. The biggest tornado ever recorded had a damage path of a little more than two and a half miles, but