EF5 Tornadoes In the US Since 1950 | Weather.com (2024)

EF5 tornadoes are the strongest on Earth, capable of truly mind-bending devastation. Fortunately, they don't happen often in the U.S., but that's partly due to how we survey tornado damage.

W​hat is an EF5? EF5 tornadoes have estimated winds of over 200 mph. We say "estimated" because it’s exceedingly rare and difficult to measure a tornado’s wind speed at the ground while it’s happening.

Instead, meteorologists examine the severity of damage to up to 23 types of buildings and up to five other objects, such as trees and towers, during a storm survey.

From that, the tornado is rated on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale from EF0 through EF5 based on the most severe damage along its path, with estimated wind speeds for each rating on the scale. Prior to 2007, the original Fujita (F) scale was used to rate tornadoes after it was created in 1971.

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W​here they've happened: F/EF5 tornadoes have happened in the Plains, Midwest and Southeast, as the map below shows.

That's because these areas of the country are most likely to have the volatile combination of extreme wind shear and instability from hot, humid air near the ground and cooler, drier air aloft to trigger supercell thunderstorms capable of violent tornadoes.

These tornadoes occurred as far north as North Dakota and as far east as Ohio.

A​labama and Oklahoma each have had seven F/EF5 tornadoes. Iowa, Kansas and Texas have had six such tornadoes each.

What EF5 damage looks like:

H​omes

A well-constructed home leveled to the ground, with debris swept clean from its foundation, is the most often-cited example of damage sufficient to earn an EF5 rating.

But it can even go beyond that into the unimaginable.

I​n the April 27, 2011 Super Outbreak, a Smithville, Mississippi, home was not only wiped away, but a large portion of its concrete slab was pulled out of the ground. In Smithville's most extreme damage path, appliances and plumbing fixtures from destroyed homes were either shredded or missing, according to the NWS-Memphis survey.

V​ehicles

V​iolent tornadoes can easily toss cars and trucks like a toddler having a temper tantrum.

T​he May 3, 1999 Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, F5 tornado tossed about a dozen vehicles a quarter of a mile. This tornado also blew and dragged an 18-ton freight car three-quarters of a mile across a field, according to the National Weather Service recap.​

T​he aforementioned Smithville, Mississippi, EF5 tornado in 2011 tossed an SUV half a mile into the town's water tower, then blew it another quarter of a mile. A pickup truck parked in front of a destroyed Smithville home was never found.

And when those vehicles come to rest, they can be unrecognizable.

Some of the over 15,000 vehicles tossed in the 2011 Joplin tornado were either crushed like aluminum cans, rolled into balls like aluminum foil or wrapped around trees.

T​rees

What trees are left standing after an EF5 tornado are often at least partially stripped of their bark and denuded of all leaves, leaving large, ghostly sticks behind.

P​avement scouring

In what may be the weirdest impact, these top-end tornadoes can scrape the surface. That's not only because of the tornado's extreme winds, but also that it's dragging debris along the ground, acting as a giant rake.

T​he April 27, 2011, EF5 tornado northeast of Philadelphia, Mississippi, scoured the ground to a depth of 2 feet in some places. It even ripped sections of asphalt from a road.

T​he Joplin 2011 EF5 tornado also scraped concrete blocks from parking lots and lifted manhole covers from city streets.

I​t's been a long time since the last one: The nation's last EF5 tornado was on May 20, 2013.

A record-long streak: This 11-year period without a single EF5 tornado is the longest on record, easily outdistancing the eight-year gap between the May 3, 1999, Moore-Bridge Creek, Oklahoma tornado and the May 4, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas twister.

As the timeline below shows, most years since 1950 have had either zero or one five-rated tornado. Years with more than one typically had more prolific tornado outbreaks, particularly the two “super outbreaks” on April 3, 1974, and April 27, 2011.

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But that "record" streak is misleading: This no-EF5 streak could be due in part to human judgment and the randomness of what tornadoes hit.

When a local National Weather Service office suspects damage from a tornado may exceed EF3, it calls a quick response team of meteorologists and engineers to help survey.

B​ut if there aren't structures in the area built strong enough to begin with to meet the standards of EF5 damage, it wouldn't be possible to achieve the rating, even if the tornado technically did have 200 mph-plus winds.

“As a result, there are fewer ‘targets’ for a tornado to hit that could be EF5. The possibility of a tornado with winds that are associated with EF5 not hitting the right kind of structure is high,” Harold Brooks, an expert on tornado damage at the National Severe Storms Laboratory, told weather.com in 2023.

And even for these experts, assigning the rating can be tricky.

“An EF rating can be affected by opinions about exactly how well built a building was,” Brooks said.

All of this means that the lack of EF5s could be more of a statistical oddity than a sign of anything meaningful, meteorologically speaking.

Lives have been upended, EF5 or not: It certainly doesn’t take a tornado nearly as strong as EF5 to turn lives upside down.

“Houses can be completely destroyed by an EF4,” Brooks said. “If it’s completely destroyed, the rating isn’t that important to its residents.”

Of the 7,191 homes damaged by the Joplin 2011 tornado, only 22 sustained EF5 damage, according to the damage survey.

A​n EF2 tornado is capable of considerable damage to a home and can destroy mobile or manufactured homes, as well.

Several deadly tornadoes recently: Through the first five months of 2024, more than a dozen tornadoes have claimed at least one life. None of those were rated EF5.

On March 24, 2023 an EF4 tornado tore an almost 60-mile path through northern Mississippi, including the towns of Rolling Fork and Silver City, and killed 17 people.

These 10 years have been deadly: There have been more than 500 deaths from tornadoes in the U.S. since the Moore, Oklahoma EF5 in 2013, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.

As we covered in a previous article, tornadoes rated EF3 or lower accounted for just over half of all tornado deaths in the U.S. from 2000 through 2023.

And tornadoes rated EF1, EF2 or EF3 have accounted for the majority of tornado deaths in the U.S. so far in 2024, according to NOAA/SPC.

So don’t get hung up on this 11-year streak without an EF5.

It’s an interesting statistic, but even without an EF5, these past 11 years prove just how serious you should take all tornado threats.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM

-​ 15 Severe Weather Tips That Could Save Your Life

-​ What To Do if You Live in a Home Without a Basem*nt or in a Mobile Home

-​ All Tornado Warnings Are Serious, But They All Aren’t The Same

-​ How Many Tornadoes Your State Sees In A Year

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He completed a Bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then a Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.