Supercell thunderstorms, and the tornadoes they spawn, are considered. Consistency with the current research trends within the disciplines of meteorology and geophysics is neglected in the pursuit of a broader framework that can directly address the large number of anomalies in the existing theories. Specifically, the common assumption that electromagnetism is too weak to influence the behavior of a supercell is challenged. The air in a supercell is moving rapidly, and a portion of that air is recirculating in a continuous loop. Due to the charge separation process in the storm, this recirculating air is bearing charged particles. The flow of charged particles constitutes a pole-less, closed-loop electric current. The movement of charged particles generates magnetic fields that then influence the movement of the particles. The magnetic fields are extremely weak by EM standards, but since electromagnetism is 39 orders of magnitude more powerful than gravity, extremely weak magnetic fields could still be powerful enough to influence, if not dominate, an open-air thermal system. If the airflow in a supercell is being modulated by electrodynamic forces, many otherwise inexplicable behaviors become far easier to understand. Most significantly, a charged double-layer is identified that travels down around the outside, and up through the inside of the storm, and the properties of this double-layer offer an explanation for tornadoes. The present work agrees that the driving force in a tornado is the low pressure under the supercell's updraft. But the defining characteristic of a tornado is that it attaches to the surface of the Earth, and this isn't explicable in fluid dynamic terms (at the given pressures, densities, viscosities, speeds, angular momenta, surface friction coefficients, etc.). The only possible conclusion is that some other force must be present, and the only other force operative in the atmosphere is electromagnetism. Previous works considered the possibility that a weak but sustained electric current between the ground and the cloud could cause a tornado. An electric current can, indeed, cause a discharge vortex, but it cannot cause a tornado, as the airflows are distinctly different. The present work takes a different approach. If a charged double-layer is traveling down around the outside of the cloud, then at the bottom of the cloud this double-layer will get rammed down to the ground, and then skidded along the ground toward the updraft. Because of its electric charge, it will induce an opposite charge in the Earth, and then it will be attracted to that opposite charge. If the tornadic inflow is attracted to the Earth, it becomes easy to understand how the tornado attaches to the surface. A vortex is not an entity, but rather, a condition in a medium, and in order to understand the vortex, we have to have to neglect the vortex and study the medium instead. So we should not say that the tornado is binding to the surface, but rather, that the tornadic inflow is binding to the surface. If an electrostatic attraction of the tornadic inflow to the Earth is added to the fluid dynamic factors, a tornadic vortex becomes possible. A wide variety of observational and instrumental data are considered, without finding reason to abandon the hypothesis that a charged double-layer is a necessary condition for tornadogenesis.

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