Intersecting tornados

[T'ai Chi]

What would happen if two tornados intersected each other?

Would they dissappate(sp)?

Would they combine to form a larger or more powerful one?

And has this ever happened on video?

[Cabbage]

Since no one else has responded, I'll give a little anecdote. About ten years ago I remember seeing a video of a tornado (taken from a helicopter, as I recall).

It was a single tornado, but at (at least) one moment, the tornado kind of fragmented into three to five smallar tornodoes spiraling around each other (and then came back together). It's been years since I've seen it, but I guess you could describe the multiple tornadoes as kind of looking like DNA double helixes, although (as I mentioned) there were more than two helixes (i.e., each tornado was spiraled in its own helix shape) , and, of course, they weren't nearly as regular and symmetric as you generally see the DNA double helix portrayed.

I don't know if that really qualifies as "multiple" tornados as you mean it, but it was interesting to watch.

[meg]

http://www.stormstock.com/tornado_footage.html includes a video of "Rare double funnel clouds join overhead as tornado sirens wail in Nebraska town"

[Jon the Geek]

http://www.stormstock.com/tornado_footage.html includes a video of "Rare double funnel clouds join overhead as tornado sirens wail in Nebraska town"
That doesn't look like 2 tornadoes joining, per se... but it does look awesome....

[meg]

Well, it is, as it says, two funnel clouds joining. I believe that the funnel cloud has to have contact with both cloud and ground to be called a tornado.

I guess my point is that if two funnel clouds can merge, as the video shows, I would think two tornadoes could also merge.

[Apollyon]

Well, it is, as it says, two funnel clouds joining. I believe that the funnel cloud has to have contact with both cloud and ground to be called a tornado.

I guess my point is that if two funnel clouds can merge, as the video shows, I would think two tornadoes could also merge.
It's possible they could merge. Recent studies have shown that some tornadoes consist of multiple vortexes spinning in one compact funnel. Besides, tornadoes are governed by the winds in the thunderstorm cloud that spawns them so what happens at the lower levels near the ground may or may not affect the winds in the cloud that are driving the funnel.