312 articles
Tornado outbreak of March 5–7, 2026
The tornado outbreak of March 5–7, 2026 produced at least 18 tornadoes from Texas to Michigan, killing at least 8 people, with the deadliest tornado striking Union City.
Tornado outbreak of May 15–16, 2025
A severe weather event across the central and eastern United States on May 15–16, 2025, with at least 79 tornadoes, two EF4s, and at least 25 deaths.
Tornado outbreak of May 18–21, 2025
The tornado outbreak of May 18–21, 2025 was a multi-day sequence of tornado-producing storms across the central and southern United States, beginning in Kansas and north Texas.
Tornado outbreak sequence of April 23–28, 2026
The tornado outbreak sequence of April 23–28, 2026 was a six-day series of severe storms across the central and southern United States, producing an EF4 tornado in Enid, Oklahoma.
Tornado records
Tornado records are the documented extremes of tornado intensity, size, path length, casualties, and damage, inferred from damage ratings because tornado winds are rarely measured at ground level.
Tornado warning
A tornado warning is an alert issued by local National Weather Service offices when a tornado is sighted or indicated by radar, telling people to take shelter immediately.
Tornado watch
A tornado watch is an alert issued by the Storm Prediction Center when tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are possible, calling for preparation rather than immediate shelter.
Tornadoes in Alabama
Tornadoes in Alabama are a frequent and deadly hazard: the state recorded 2,721 tornadoes from 1950 through 2025, with the deadliest outbreak on April 27, 2011.
Tornadoes in Canada
Tornadoes in Canada occur chiefly in the southern Prairies, Ontario, and Quebec, averaging about 65 recorded tornadoes per year; the most intense on record was the F5 at Elie, Manitoba, in 2007.
Tornadoes in Chicago
Tornadoes in Chicago are tornadoes that have struck the city and its surrounding metropolitan area in northeastern Illinois. Several have hit within the city limits despite popular belief otherwise.
Tornadoes in Europe
Tornadoes in Europe occur far more often than popular awareness suggests: 9,563 were reported from 1800 to 2014, most weak, with violent events like the 1845 Montville, France tornado killing 70.
Tornadoes in Oklahoma
Tornadoes in Oklahoma are the tornadoes recorded in Oklahoma, a state in Tornado Alley with records back to 1875 and a 1999–2013 peak of violent F5 storms.
Tornadoes in the United States
Tornadoes in the United States are violently rotating columns of air, about 1,200 reported yearly, rated on the Enhanced Fujita Scale and most frequent east of the Rockies.
Tornadoes of 2016
The tornadoes of 2016 were the tornado events recorded worldwide in 2016, a below-average year in the United States marked by deadly outbreaks in Kansas, Oklahoma, and China.
Tornadoes of 2019
The tornadoes of 2019 included about 1,520 US tornadoes, the fourth highest total on record, a deadly March EF4 in Alabama, and a record 13-day May outbreak.
Tornadoes of 2020
The tornadoes of 2020 produced about 1,200 tornadoes across the United States, killing 76 people; the Easter outbreak was the deadliest since 2014, and three outbreaks were billion-dollar disasters.
Tornadoes of 2021
The tornadoes of 2021 were the year's tornado events in the United States and Canada, including a deadly December outbreak that killed 89 people across eight states.
Tornadoes of 2022
The tornadoes of 2022 brought 1,331 preliminary US tornadoes, a record March count of 293, EF4 tornadoes at Winterset, Iowa, and Bryan County, Georgia, and 23 fatalities.
Tornadoes of 2023
The tornadoes of 2023 brought about 1,200 U.S. tornadoes and 86 deaths, defined by a record March, the Rolling Fork, Mississippi EF4, and the March 31 outbreak, one of the largest single-day outbreaks in U.S. history.
Tornadoes of 2024
The tornadoes of 2024 produced 1,796 confirmed tornadoes in the United States, the second-highest annual count on record behind 2004, with 54 deaths across 17 states.
Tornadoes of 2025
The tornadoes of 2025 in the United States produced 1,559 preliminary tornadoes, the fifth-highest total on record, including an EF5 near Enderlin, North Dakota, the first since 2013.
Tornadoes of 2026
The tornadoes of 2026 include a record 148 tornadoes in Illinois by June, a deadly March outbreak, and a destructive July EF3 near Appleton, Wisconsin.
Tornadoes striking downtown areas of large cities
Tornadoes striking downtown areas of large cities are tornadoes whose paths cross a major city's downtown core, such as Salt Lake City in 1999 and Atlanta in 2008.
Tornadogenesis
Tornadogenesis is the process by which a tornado forms, concentrating existing thunderstorm rotation into a small, intensely spinning column of air in contact with the ground.
TORRO scale
The TORRO scale, or International Tornado Intensity Scale, is an 11-point scale rating tornado intensity by wind speed from T0 to T10, devised in 1972 by Terence Meaden.
Tropical cyclone preparedness
Tropical cyclone preparedness, or hurricane preparedness, covers the household planning, warning systems, evacuation, and structural mitigation used to reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage from tropical cyclones.
TWISTEX
TWISTEX, the Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in Tornadoes Experiment, was a tornado research project begun in 2007 that placed instrumented probes inside tornadoes and mobile mesonets around them.
VORTEX projects
The VORTEX projects are a series of NOAA tornado field research campaigns run since 1994, including VORTEX2 (2009–2010) and VORTEX-Southeast (2016–2018), coordinated largely through the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.
Waffle House Index
The Waffle House Index is an informal, color-coded gauge of disaster severity, read from whether local Waffle House restaurants are open, on limited menu, or closed.
Warming center
A warming center, also called a warm bank, is a short-term heated facility opened during extreme cold, primarily to protect homeless people from cold-related illness and death.