On April 5–6, 1936, an outbreak of at least 14 tornadoes struck the Southeastern United States, killing at least 454 people and injuring at least 2,500 others. Over 200 people died in Georgia alone, making it the deadliest disaster ever recorded in the state.
The 1899 New Richmond tornado was an estimated F5 tornado that formed in the early evening of Monday, June 12, 1899, leaving a 45-mile-long (72 km) path of destruction through St. Croix, Polk, and Barron counties in west-central Wisconsin. There was a total of 117 fatalities and 125 injuries, with hundreds more reported as displaced its wake. The worst devastation occurred in the city of New Richmond, which took a direct hit from the storm. Over half of the town was left in ruins due to the tornado, which also caused minor damage to surrounding communities. The damage was reported to be over $300,000 (USD). As of 2019, it is ranked as the ninth deadliest tornado in United States history, as well as the deadliest ever recorded in Wisconsin.
Tornado intensity is the measure of wind speeds and potential risk produced by a tornado. Intensity can be measured by in situ or remote sensing measurements, but since these are impractical for wide-scale use, intensity is usually inferred by proxies, such as damage. The Fujita scale, Enhanced Fujita scale, and the International Fujita scale rate tornadoes by the damage caused. In contrast to other major storms such as hurricanes and typhoons, such classifications are only assigned retroactively. Wind speed alone is not enough to determine the intensity of a tornado. An EF0 tornado may damage trees and peel some shingles off roofs, while an EF5 tornado can rip well-anchored homes off their foundations, leaving them bare— even deforming large skyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes. Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns may also be analyzed to determine the intensity and assign a rating.
The tornado outbreak of February 28 – March 2, 2007 was a deadly tornado outbreak across the southern United States that began in Kansas on February 28, 2007. The severe weather spread eastward on March 1 and left a deadly mark across the southern US, particularly in Alabama and Georgia. Twenty deaths were reported; one in Missouri, nine in Georgia, and 10 in Alabama. Scattered severe weather was also reported in North Carolina on March 2, producing the final tornado of the outbreak before the storms moved offshore into the Atlantic Ocean.
A deadly tornado outbreak struck portions of the southeastern United States on March 20, 1998. Particularly hard hit were rural areas outside of Gainesville, Georgia, where at least 12 people were killed in an early morning F3 tornado. The entire outbreak killed 14 people and produced 12 tornadoes across three states with the town of Stoneville, North Carolina, being also hard hit by the storms.
This page documents the tornadoes and tornado outbreaks of 2000, primarily in the United States. Most tornadoes form in the U.S., although some events may take place internationally, particularly in parts of neighboring southern Canada during the summer season.
The Teton–Yellowstone tornado was a rare high-altitude tornado which occurred on July 21, 1987, in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Rated at F4 on the Fujita scale, it remains the strongest tornado ever recorded in the state and the only officially rated F4/EF4 in Wyoming history. The tornado cut through a 24.4-mile (39.2 km)-long and 1.6-mile (2.5 km)-wide swath of the Teton Wilderness and Yellowstone National Park, crossing the Continental Divide. Damage occurred at elevations ranging from 8,500 to 10,000 feet, making it the highest-altitude violent tornado recorded in the United States. At the time, it was the highest-elevation tornado known, since surpassed by several others, including a 2004 tornado above 12,000 feet (3,700 m) in California's Sequoia National Park. While no human fatalities or injuries occurred, an estimated one million trees were felled by the tornado. The tornado damage was originally thought to be the result of strong thunderstorm straight-line winds until the area was surveyed by University of Chicago severe weather meteorologist Ted Fujita and his colleagues, who published a paper in 1989 surveying the tornado's path and discussing its meteorological character.
The 2012 Leap Day tornado outbreak was a significant and deadly tornado outbreak on February 28 and February 29, 2012. It is so called because the second day was a leap day. It caused severe damage in several regions, especially the Great Plains and Ohio Valley regions. It also resulted in several tornadoes in the Central Plains, a rarity for the time of year. The most destructive and deadly tornado was a violent early-morning EF4 that hit Harrisburg, Illinois, killing 8 people. In total, 15 people died in the outbreak. Just two days later, a larger and deadlier outbreak devastated the Ohio Valley and Southern United States.
During the late afternoon and early evening of April 27, 2011, a violent, high-end EF4 multi-vortex tornado known as the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado or the Tuscaloosa tornado, destroyed portions of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama, as well as smaller communities and rural areas between the two cities. It is one of the costliest tornadoes on record, and was one of the 367 tornadoes in the 2011 Super Outbreak, the largest tornado outbreak in United States history. The tornado reached a maximum path width of 1.5 miles (2.4 km) during its track through Tuscaloosa, and again when it crossed I-65 north of Birmingham, attaining estimated wind speeds of 190 mph (310 km/h) shortly after passing through the city. It then went on to impact parts of Birmingham at high-end EF4 intensity before dissipating. This was the third tornado to strike the city of Tuscaloosa in the past decade, and the second in two weeks.
The Rana Plaza collapse occurred on 24 April 2013, when the eight-storey Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed due to a structural failure. The search for survivors lasted for 19 days and ended on 13 May 2013, with a confirmed death toll of 1,134. Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building. It is considered to be one of the deadliest structural failures in modern human history, as well as the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history, and is the deadliest industrial accident in the history of Bangladesh. Amnesty International called it "the most shocking recent example of business-related human rights abuse."
A relatively widespread, damaging, and deadly tornado outbreak struck the central and southern United States in late April 2014. The storm complex responsible for the outbreak produced multiple long-track tornadoes – seven of which were deadly, causing 35 fatalities. One additional death occurred in Florida, due to severe flooding associated with this system.
On the afternoon of June 23, 2016, a severe thunderstorm produced an extremely large, violent tornado over Jiangsu province, China. Striking areas northeast of Yancheng around 2:30 p.m. local time, the tornado killed 98 people and injured 846 others (152 critically). The China Meteorological Administration later ranked the tornado as an EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Another tornado spawned by the same supercell killed one person in the Sheyang area.
Throughout the evening hours of April 9, 2015, an extremely violent and long-lived multiple-vortex tornado tore through the communities near Rochelle and in Fairdale, Illinois. Part of a larger severe weather event that impacted the Central United States, the tornado first touched down in Lee County at 6:39 p.m. CDT (23:39 UTC). It progressed through the counties of Ogle, DeKalb, and Boone before finally dissipating at 7:20 p.m. CDT. Along the tornado's 30.14-mile (48.51 km) path, numerous structures were heavily damaged or destroyed, especially in the small town of Fairdale where two fatalities and eleven injuries were recorded. A few well-constructed homes were swept completely away, indicative of peak winds near 200 mph (320 km/h), the upper bounds of an EF4 tornado. In the aftermath of the event, hundreds of citizens assisted in cleanup and recovery efforts. Economic losses from the tornado reached $19 million.
A rare, violent, and deadly long-tracked tornado struck several villages in the Hodonín and Břeclav districts of the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic in the evening of 24 June 2021, killing six people and injuring 576 others. This tornado is the widest on record in Europe, at 3.5km maximum width. The tornado struck seven municipalities, with the worst damage in the villages of Hrušky, Moravská Nová Ves, Mikulčice and Lužice.
During the late evening of Friday, December 10, 2021, a violent, long-tracked and devastating EF4 tornado, sometimes referred to as the Western Kentucky tornado, Mayfield tornado, or The Beast, moved across Western Kentucky, United States, producing severe-to-catastrophic damage in numerous towns, including Mayfield, Princeton, Dawson Springs, and Bremen. This tornado was the second significant tornado in an exceedingly long-tracked tornado family; it began just inside northern Obion County, Tennessee – a few miles after another long-tracked tornado that traveled through northeast Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel, and northwest Tennessee – and dissipated in western Obion County. After crossing into Kentucky, the tornado moved through eleven counties of the Jackson Purchase and Western Coal Field regions, at times becoming wrapped in rain during its almost three-hour lifespan that covered 165.6 miles (266.5 km). It was the deadliest and longest-tracked tornado in an outbreak that produced numerous, strong tornadoes in several states; this tornado caused 57 deaths.
Mayfield Consumer Products is an American family-owned company, based in Mayfield, Kentucky. It manufactures branded candles and home fragrance products. On December 10, 2021, a Mayfield candle-making factory was leveled by a tornado, resulting in eight deaths and multiple injuries. The company faced multiple lawsuits, due to allegations of forcing their employees to stay in the factory.
On Monday, June 1, 1903, a catastrophic tornado struck the city of Gainesville, Georgia, killing at least 98 people and injuring 180 or more. The tornado is retrospectively estimated to have been an F4 on the modern-day Fujita scale. The tornado, which was of very brief duration relative to its intensity, lasted approximately two minutes, and struck a trail roughly 4 mi (6.4 km) long. According to tornado researcher Thomas P. Grazulis, the Gainesville tornado was one of the shortest-tracked F4 tornadoes on record. It skirted the south of the city, starting in the southwest and proceeding northeast, passing through a natural depression roughly 100 ft (30 m) lower than the city itself. The area, which included cotton mills, reported about 50 deaths and incurred the worst damage; in this area the intensity of the damage was equivalent to low-end F4 status. Unlike a similar event in 1936, the 1903 tornado missed downtown Gainesville.
On the afternoon of April 5, 2022, amid a tornado outbreak across the Southeastern United States, a large and violent tornado struck the city of Pembroke and the community of Black Creek, Georgia. The National Weather Service forecast office in Charleston, South Carolina, rated the worst of the damage from the tornado EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale with winds estimated at 185 miles per hour (298 km/h), which made this strongest tornado in 2022. The tornado killed one person, injured 12 others, and caused $17 million in damage.
