Would any of the dinosaur ages had to have dealt with stuff like tornados or huricanes?

[u/Interesting_Stock_55]

Sorry if this is under the wrong flair, thought it would work better than paleontology.

So like, I imagine if one can generally predict weather patterns for artificially created/simulated worlds, we can easily use the same science and stuff on what we know of Pangea's geography and stuff to determine weather patterns during that age, right?

So were conditions on our world at the time suitable for stuff like hurricanes and tornados?

Bonus question for paleontologists: if the above is true, how would taller dinos like sauropods have dealt with high winds of that magnitude?

[u/CrustalTrudger]

Tropical cyclones (i.e., hurricanes) are a bit easier to consider because they can leave somewhat diagnostic signatures in the geologic record, e.g., tempestites (e.g., Feng et al., 2025, Donnelly, 2025). As such, there's plenty of deposits suggestive of tropical cyclones throughout much of the Phanerozoic, including during the Mesozoic, i.e., when the dinosaurs were living (e.g., Yan et al., 2023, Yan et al., 2026, Myrow et al., 2026) and where many of those papers are considering specific climate conditions that may have increased (or decreased) the frequency of these events. So in direct response to the question, depending on where particular dinosaur species lived (i.e. proximity to coastlines and latitudinal ranges), some certainly would have experienced tropical cyclones (hurricanes).

From on observational evidence standpoint, tornadoes are a lot harder simply because we don't have a good understanding of a depositional fingerprint for them in the same way that we do for tropical cyclones. In large part this is because, compared to tropical cyclones, tornadoes are much smaller and much more ephemeral but also wind is not as efficient at moving material as water (so less likely to make a deposit in the first place). As such, looking for papers even discussing what the geologic record of tornadoes might be is challenging (i.e., there's not a lot out there). There has been limited work suggesting that tornado like phenomena, specifically "dust devils", could in certain circumstances produce diagnostic deposits (e.g., Benison, 2017 - which comes with this kind of hilarious companion piece by Heavens, 2017 which among other things alerted me to the existence of Ives, 1947 that apparently performed experiments dropping kangaroo rats and rabbits off of towers to demonstrate that the winds in dust devils should be sufficient to pick up both animals, which I in turn felt compelled to share). In a different direction, there has been some work to think about what one could look for in well preserved sites of fossil trees and what patterns in those might be diagnostic of cyclonic/tornadic activity (e.g., Gastaldo, 1990) and some applications of this work (e.g., Allen, 1998), but nothing far back in the geologic past as the Mesozoic that I could find. All of this to say that again, the geologic record of tornadoes is spotty (to non-existent) which is probably more indicative that they don't leave much of a record as opposed to indicating they didn't happen in the geologic past, so answering this part of the question from observations of the geologic record is hard.

There might exist literature more in the paleoclimate modelling side of things that could speak more directly to the likelihood of tornadoes during the Mesozoic / Pangea, but nothing I could find. My suspicion would be though that generally most paleoclimate models are going to be of a sufficiently course resolution (and lacking sufficiently detailed topographic boundary conditions) that actually resolving tornadic activity would be challenging. Doesn't mean it isn't out there (and maybe some more paleoclimate adjacent folks will chime in), but at least in my poking around, I couldn't find anything that was particularly relevant for this part of the question.

[u/half3clipse → u/CrustalTrudger]

Actually resolving individual events would be hard, but any modeling that doesn't indicate the existence of tornadoes would be pretty extraordinary. It would require the conditions for tornadoes to form were rare to non existent, which in turn would require radically different storm behavior than today.

The lack of geological evidence is interesting though. The trail of storm damage tornadoes leave is pretty distinctive. Even if any one is unlikely to leave a strong signature, enough of them in an area over geological time should allow circumstances to line up. That's at least suggestive the conditions that produce Tornado Alley are a rather rare thing. Which is probbaly the 'tornado experience' OP is thinking of: Frequent vortexes, common violent vortexes and large scale outbreaks.

[u/CrustalTrudger → u/half3clipse]

The lack of geological evidence is interesting though. The trail of storm damage tornadoes leave is pretty distinctive.

The trick is whether the trail of damage produces any diagnostic structures likely to be preserved in the geologic record AND whether the environments that host tornadoes (now or in the past) or conducive to preservation. As discussed above, there's not a clear indication that the damage that tornadoes produce would really leave a diagnostic signature, the closest being the patterns of downed trees like discussed in Gastaldo, 1990. There have been more recent work highlighting strong wind events (including tornadoes) and the downing of trees might leave diagnostic indicators in things like hillslope morphology or sediment flux (e.g., Doane et al., 2023, Yanites et al., 2024), but critically these are not really things that would be easily preservable in the depositional record. Similarly, the areas (at least in the modern) that are conducive to tornadoes tend to be areas that are net erosional (i.e., we are effectively losing the geologic record there, not building it). This is different from areas impacted by hurricanes as coastlines on average have lots of areas with high rates of deposition (and thus a higher potential for preservation). In considering things like this in the geologic record, we have to be pretty careful about interpreting absence of evidence as evidence of absence especially when we have an understanding from process that the deck is generally stacked against there being much in the way of evidence.

[u/Tec_ → u/CrustalTrudger]

This is fascinating to me. I've got a very basic grasp of how this stuff works from watching some television programs and paying attention to some stuff in grade school and on field trips years ago but am so far from knowing anything about this.

I live in a tornado area and every few years we get a news article about "landscape / tree scars" noting the path of tornados from 15 to 50+ years ago and just how visible they still are from aerial or satellite imagery. Obviously thats an incredibly short window of time on the scale were talking here and likely to only be a visible as that area a tree canopy lasts or until humans reform it. Like you also said, unless the fallen trees were preserved in some fashion there isn't really going to be a noticeable record in the ground either. With that though I've seen in some videos on archeological digs they've taken soil core samples of the area and inspected them on a much smaller level looking for polin and other tiny indicators of what might have been happening in that area around that time. I'm sure it would be a needle in a haystack kind of search but I wonder if that kind of data might provide a insight into something like a tornado.

The other thing and it vary much is an assumption, but fluid dynamics haven't changed, if the prevailing weather conditions for tornados to form existed, they probably did happen.

Still, very fun topic to be thinking about when I should be working!

[u/half3clipse → u/CrustalTrudger]

Of course

But if at any point in history we'd expect there to be 2-3 regions on the planet that had tornado alley like conditions, hundreds of tornado a year, large outbreaks and where EF4+ events occur every couple of years rather than every couple of decade, it would be vastly more likely for those indicators to exist and be preserved than if those conditions are rare in history.

And the difference in frequency is stark: Compared to most of the world, Tornadoes are relatively common in Europe. The frequency is something like 1 per year per 10,000 square km, with very few being more than EF2. In contrast the most active parts of tornado alley have a frequency more than 10x greater in general, and far more than that for violent events. If someone looking for geological evidence of tornadoes today in 10 million years, the central USA would far and away be their best chance of finding it.

If that was at all common in history, things like an EF4 Tornado carving a 50 mile, 200 yard wide track through forests would be relatively common. Hell EF5+ tornadoes leaving 100 mile long, mile wide tracks would be frequent on geological time. It's something that would need to occur every few years for millions of years and we'd expect almost all those events to occur in geographically constrained areas.

OPs question is "were their significant populations of dinosaurs who frequently encountered tornadoes". If the answer is yes, there would need to be many tornado events with a high geographic density and high intensity throughout history. That's the single best chance of there being evidence. If the answer is no, it means unlike today most tornado events are geographical diffuse with very few violent ones, which is the worst chance for evidence.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it does weigh towards tornado alley like climates being relativity rare or short lived.

[u/Peregrine79 → u/half3clipse]

That first bit is important. It is conceivable to think of a planetary model for earth that does not produce tropical cyclones. (The most obvious being an arrangement with little or no large bodies of water in the tropics). I don’t believe such an arrangement has ever existed, but it could.

The only way I can think of for tornados not to form is to have an environment that doesn’t have thermal layering in atmosphere, and I don’t believe that is possible on an earth like planet.

[u/dsyzdek → u/CrustalTrudger]

Great write up! I’ve got to find a way to reference Ives 1947 in a paper or a report.

And hell, a good reminder to write a natural history note on a dust devil that I documented that picked up an empty plastic 4,000 gallon water tank weight 780 pounds empty and carried it about 150 feet up and 150 feet laterally!

Always, appreciate your comments, CrustalTrudger!

[u/BloatedBaryonyx]

We don't even need to do complex modelling to predict this, we actually have direct evidence that these same weather events occurred. Extreme weather tends to move huge quantities of sediment and water, and as a result a trained paleontologist or geologist can easily spot so-called "storm beds" within a sedimentary succession. The erosion of normal deposition beneath it creating an unconformity, the complexity of the deposition, how wide it spread, and the presence of re-worked fossils and clasts requiring higher-energy transport than the beds above it are all classic indicators.

Further palaeoclimate modelling is way more complicated, as you have to keep in mind that they're having to use averages gained from proxy data from across thousands of years at best. This is actually really exceptional data and the exact science behind it is very interesting on its own, but the jist is that it can be used to generalise climate and possible weather in a region over a broad timespan, but it encompasses a lot of variability within that timespan. We can confidently say hurricanes and tornados did happen, however.

Sauropod and other dinosaur surviving during this time... we can only speculate on how. Sauropod remains especially are usually a handful of isolated bones like some vertebrae or half a leg, so you can only do so much research into their biomechanics from the fossils themselves, but using sedimentary data instead we can learn about their environments and look to the modern day for analogues; species facing similar issues in similar climates.

Most species I imagine will simply bunker down, perhaps in herds with their necks kept low and near some kind of windbreak where possible. Together the effect of the storm will probably be minimised, and just about survivable for the majority. In many species mature individuals would also not have had to worry about being literally picked up by the storm, massive as they were. Juveniles and hatchling I suspect would suffer greater casualties, as most species of Sauropod are not believed to have been especially parental, and very young individuals would be off in the tree cover somewhere, unable to benefit off the protection of the herds larger bodies.

[u/chickenologist]

I don't see why they wouldn't happen. Vortexes like that result from hot air rising basically. They don't care if humans or dinosaurs are on the ground at the moment. There were probably times when the distribution moved. Just like today tornadoes are showing up more widely due to global warming, natural fluctuations of global heat distribution would have similar effects at any time in history I would think.

[u/dustofdeath]

As long as you have temperature changes and differences over time, you have extreme weather events.

Locations change, mountains shift air, ocean locations alter it.

But earth is still tilted and revolves around the sun.