It’s on the desert level, I’m running around like crazy trying to figure this out. I was told there are tornados that blow you up there but I haven’t seen anything like that.

You need to find a switch, they're usually a red button on the floor. If you stand on them, they will turn blue. If you can't jump up there, then there may be a jump pad that will launch you there.

Those actually are only accessible via the tornadoes, but they are a random weather effect, so you could go multiple runs without one ever showing up.

Yes, it's only through tornadoes that you can get to those. As Andr said, they're random and may never appear.