Seventy-seven years of U.S. tornadoes
Every tornado recorded in the contiguous United States since 1950, placed at the midpoint of its track and smoothed into a density field. Drag the timeline, scroll, or use the arrow keys to move through the years.
Reading this map. Color shows how tightly tornadoes were packed — tornadoes per
10,000 km² per year, on an 80 km grid smoothed with a 120 km Gaussian kernel, after
Brooks, Doswell & Kay (2003). Black dots are individual tornadoes. The color scale is
fixed across all years, so a pale map is a genuinely quiet year.
Reports are not a fixed yardstick. How many tornadoes get recorded depends on
population density, observing technology and public awareness, none of which has held
steady since 1950. Early years are undercounted, particularly for weak tornadoes.
The pink box marks the single 80 km grid cell holding that year's peak density.
The state outlined in blue recorded the most tornadoes that year. The card gives both
ranks: peak density, and total tornado count.
The stat card names the two largest towns inside the 80 km cell that holds that
year's peak density — or the two nearest, where the cell has no town of 15,000 or more.
2026 is incomplete and estimated. It covers 1 January – 14 August only. Preliminary
reports were deduplicated (1,530 raw reports collapse to 977 distinct tornadoes) and then
rescaled to a final-count basis using the 2010–2025 relationship between deduplicated
preliminary reports and final counts — 0.815 nationally, 0.732 in Illinois. Counts marked
est. are that estimate, not a tally. Every other year is a complete
calendar year, so 2026's rank is a floor, not a final figure.