How to read the tornado history map
The map shows 73,458 tornadoes recorded in the United States from 1950 to 2025. Each tornado is a line from where it touched down to where it lifted, coloured and sized by its rating on the Fujita scale (before 1 February 2007) or the Enhanced Fujita scale (since). Tornadoes with no recorded end point are drawn as dots.
- F0 / EF0. Light damage
- F1 / EF1. Moderate damage
- F2 / EF2. Considerable damage
- F3 / EF3. Severe damage
- F4 / EF4. Devastating damage
- F5 / EF5. Incredible damage
- Unknown. Not rated (2007 onwards)
Most tornadoes are weak: 45% are rated 0 and 34% are rated 1, while only 596 are rated 4 and 60 are rated 5. Use the controls under the map to pick a range of years, choose which ratings to show, or look at one state. When you are zoomed out, only the stronger tornadoes are drawn so the map stays readable. Zoom in and weaker ones appear.
All 73,458 tornadoes by rating
| Rating | Tornadoes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| F0 / EF0Light damage | 33,329 | 45% |
| F1 / EF1Moderate damage | 25,179 | 34% |
| F2 / EF2Considerable damage | 10,079 | 14% |
| F3 / EF3Severe damage | 2,669 | 4% |
| F4 / EF4Devastating damage | 596 | <1% |
| F5 / EF5Incredible damage | 60 | <1% |
| Unknown ratingNot rated (2007 onwards) | 1,546 | 2% |
How tornadoes are rated
A tornado is rated by the damage it leaves, because wind speed is hard to measure inside one. Surveyors from the National Weather Service walk the damage, compare it with a list of building and tree types, and give the tornado a number from 0 to 5. Before 1 February 2007 the Fujita (F) scale was used, and the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale has been used since. The EF scale uses more careful damage indicators, but the numbers line up closely enough that this map shows them together as F/EF 0 to 5. Older tornadoes were rated from reports afterwards, some many years later.
Weak tornadoes are far more common than violent ones. Across the whole record, 80% are rated 0 or 1, and only 1% are rated 4 or 5. A tornado rated 0 can still break windows and fell trees. A rating is about damage, so a strong tornado that crosses open fields may be rated low, and a weak one that hits a town may do real harm.
The Tornado Alley map: Tornado Alley and Dixie Alley
This site works as a Tornado Alley map. To see it, open the map, zoom out to the central United States and leave every rating switched on. The tracks bunch into a wide band across the Plains. Then drag the year-range slider to look at a single decade, or hide the weakest ratings to see where the stronger tornadoes cluster. Tornado Alley is a nickname, not an official region, so you will not find a line on the map. It is usually said to run from Texas up through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska towards South Dakota.
The data agrees with the nickname. Texas has the most tornadoes of any state, with 9,646, helped by being so large. Counted for every 10,000 square miles, Oklahoma has 666 and Kansas 566. Florida comes out highest on that measure, with 702, so a busy Tornado Alley is not the whole story. Warm, wet air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cool, dry air from the north and west on the Plains, and the Rocky Mountains help set up the winds that make storms spin.
Dixie Alley is the name for the Deep South, around Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. The map shows it as a second area of dense tracks to the east. Tornadoes there are more often hidden by rain, trees and darkness, and happen more in the cooler months, which is why they can be especially dangerous. Choose a state with the state filter, or open a state page such as Oklahoma tornado history, to compare.
When tornadoes happen
Tornadoes have a season. May is the busiest month in the record, with 16,070 tornadoes, then June and April. Together those three months hold 54% of all tornadoes, and March to June holds 62%. January is the quietest month, with 3% of the total. The season moves north through spring as warmer air does.
The worst single day in the record is 27 April 2011, with 210 tornadoes in one outbreak. Tornadoes can strike in any month, so a quiet month on the chart is not a safe one.
Tornadoes near me
Search a town or ZIP code, press Near me, or tap anywhere on the map. A summary card shows how many tornadoes have passed within 5, 10 and 25 miles of that spot since 1950, and the closest, strongest, most recent and longest of them. It uses every rating and every year, whatever the filters are set to.
Your browser asks for permission before Near me works, and your position stays on your device. Search covers towns and ZIP codes; street addresses are not supported yet.
Tap a line to see its date, rating, path length and width, injuries, deaths and the counties it crossed.
Read this before you rely on the numbers
- Paths are mostly straight lines from the recorded start point to the end point, not surveyed damage paths. 36,577 tornadoes have no end point at all.
- Older records, especially from before the 1990s, are less precise.
- The rating scale changed from F to EF on 1 February 2007. 1,546 tornadoes from 2007 onwards have no rating.
- A tornado that crossed a state line is one tornado nationally, but it counts in every state it touched. State totals can therefore add up to more than 73,458.
- More weak tornadoes are recorded now than in the early decades, partly because more people are watching and reporting. Compare decades with care.
- This is a historical record. It is not a forecast or warning service, and it is not a risk assessment. For live warnings use the National Weather Service.
Tornado history by state
Every state has a page with its tornado count, the deadliest and strongest tornadoes and a county list. The states with the most tornadoes since 1950:
- Texas tornado history (9,646 tornadoes)
- Kansas tornado history (4,630 tornadoes)
- Oklahoma tornado history (4,569 tornadoes)
- Florida tornado history (3,767 tornadoes)
- Nebraska tornado history (3,254 tornadoes)
- Illinois tornado history (3,181 tornadoes)
- Iowa tornado history (3,135 tornadoes)
- Mississippi tornado history (2,901 tornadoes)
Adjusted for size, Florida has the most, with 702 for every 10,000 square miles.
Notable tornadoes
Tornadoes rated 4 or 5, or that killed three or more people, have their own pages with the track on a map. The deadliest in the record:
- Joplin, Missouri tornado22 May 2011, EF5, 158 deaths, 1,150 injuries, 21.6 miles long
- Flushing, Michigan tornado8 June 1953, F5, 116 deaths, 844 injuries, 18.9 miles long
- Waco, Texas tornado11 May 1953, F5, 114 deaths, 597 injuries, 20.9 miles long
- Framingham, Massachusetts tornado9 June 1953, F4, 94 deaths, 1,228 injuries, 34.9 miles long
- Newkirk, Oklahoma tornado25 May 1955, F5, 80 deaths, 273 injuries, 56.4 miles long
Behind every number here are people who were hurt or killed. We give the figures as the official record has them, and try to describe each event plainly.
Hurricanes too
The same history is available for hurricanes and tropical storms, state by state and county by county.
Where the data comes from
The tornadoes come from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center database, file 1950-2025_actual_tornadoes.csv, downloaded on 2026-10-12. State and county boundaries are from the US Census Bureau. Every count on this site is worked out from the official file by a script that runs the same way each time. See all data sources and licences.
The Storm Prediction Center keeps the national record, built from reports sent in by local National Weather Service offices. After a tornado, forecasters and survey teams visit the damage and write down where it started and stopped, how wide and long it was, its rating, and the deaths and injuries. The Storm Prediction Center then gathers those reports into a single database, which is the file this site uses.
Because of this, the number of tornadoes recorded is not simply the number that happened. Weak tornadoes in open country can pass unseen, and the record only holds those that someone noticed and reported. Radar, trained storm spotters, photographs shared online and more people living in the path of storms mean far more weak tornadoes have been logged since the 1990s. The record shows 4,793 tornadoes in the 1950s and 12,070 in the 2010s, and most of that rise is in the weakest ratings. The 2020s run only to 2025, with 8,094 so far.
The switch from the F scale to the EF scale in 2007 also changed how damage is judged, and 1,546 tornadoes from 2007 onwards have no rating at all. For these reasons, the safest comparisons are of strong tornadoes (rated 4 or 5), which were rarely missed, or of places and years within one era. A rise in the total count is not proof that tornadoes are becoming more common.
Frequently asked questions
Which tornadoes are on this map?
Every tornado in the Storm Prediction Center's official record from 1950 to 2025: 73,458 in all. Earlier tornadoes, such as the Tri-State tornado of 1925, are not in that record, so they are not on the map.
What is Tornado Alley?
Tornado Alley is a nickname for the part of the central United States where tornadoes are most common, usually described as running from Texas north through Oklahoma and Kansas to Nebraska and South Dakota. It has no official border. This site is a Tornado Alley map you can test for yourself: Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma have the most recorded tornadoes of any state, and the map shows where the tracks bunch together.
What is Dixie Alley?
Dixie Alley is the name used for the Deep South, around Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, where tornadoes are also common. They are harder to see coming there: more of them happen in the cooler months and at night, and trees and hills hide them, which is why the region is often said to be dangerous for its tornadoes.
Has a tornado ever hit my town?
Type your town or ZIP code into the search box on the map, press Near me, or tap anywhere on the map. You get the number of tornadoes that have passed within 5, 10 and 25 miles since 1950, plus the closest, strongest, most recent and longest. Street-address search is not available yet. If the card shows none nearby, that is a fact about the record, not a promise about the future.
What do F and EF ratings mean?
Both scales rate a tornado from 0 (weakest) to 5 (strongest) by the damage it caused, not by the size of the funnel. The Fujita (F) scale was used until 1 February 2007, and the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale has been used since. The EF scale judges damage against a list of building and tree types and estimates the wind speed that would cause it. The two scales are close but not identical, and the map labels each tornado with the scale in use at the time.
What was the deadliest tornado in the record?
The Joplin, Missouri tornado of 22 May 2011, rated EF5, killed 158 people and injured 1,150. Its recorded path was 21.6 miles long. It has a page with its path on a map, and the deadliest tornadoes are listed above.
What was the strongest and longest tornado?
60 tornadoes in the record are rated 5, so there is no single strongest one. The most recent of them is the Enderlin, North Dakota tornado of 20 June 2025. The longest recorded path is 234.7 miles, a tornado in Louisiana on 22 March 1953. Very long paths in older records may be several tornadoes joined together, so treat them with care.
When are tornadoes most common?
May is the busiest month, with 16,070 tornadoes in the record, and the three busiest months (May, June, April) hold 54% of them. January is the quietest. Tornadoes can happen in any month and at any time of day.
How far back does the data go?
The record starts in 1950 and runs to 2025. Older records are less precise than recent ones, and many weak tornadoes from the early years were never recorded at all, so compare decades with care.
How accurate are the paths?
Most tornadoes are recorded as a straight line from the point where they touched down to the point where they lifted, not as the real path on the ground. Some have only a start point and are drawn as dots. Older records, especially from before the 1990s, are less precise.
Is this a tornado warning or forecast service?
No. This site shows past tornadoes only. For live watches, warnings and forecasts, use the National Weather Service at weather.gov, and for outlooks the Storm Prediction Center at spc.noaa.gov.
Data credits: see all data sources and licences. 6,341 deaths and 99,311 injuries are recorded in the file from 1950 to 2025.