The Last EF5 Tornado Was A Record 10 Years Ago

It’s been a record-long 10 years since the last EF5 tornado happened in the U.S. And while that statistic sounds notable, it doesn't tell the whole story.

May 20, 2013 was a horrifying day. That afternoon, a violent tornado raked through central Oklahoma from Newcastle to Moore to the southern side of Oklahoma City. This single tornado killed 24, injured 207 and was responsible for $2 billion in damage. It was also rated EF5.

How strong is an EF5 tornado? Since it’s exceedingly rare and difficult to measure a tornado’s wind speeds while it’s happening, meteorologists rate a tornado’s intensity based on a post-storm damage survey that analyzes the damage it inflicted.

They do that utilizing the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale. The scale estimates a tornado’s wind speeds by looking at the severity of damage to up to 23 types of buildings and up to five other objects such as trees and towers.

Tornadoes are then rated on a scale from EF0 through EF5 based on the most severe damage along their path. EF5 tornado wind speeds are estimated to be over 200 mph.

What does EF5 damage look like? A well-constructed house 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.

That happened to 22 homes in Joplin, Missouri, during the deadly May 2011 tornado an EF5 rating, according to a comprehensive damage survey published in 2012.

After the May 20, 2013, Moore, Oklahoma, tornado, the National Weather Service rated the virtually destroyed Briarwood Elementary School as EF5 damage.

Some other extreme examples of damage seen in the Joplin tornado included missing manhole covers, concrete parking curbs picked up and vehicles thrown more than 300 feet.

It’s a record-long streak without one. This 10-year streak is the longest period on record without a single EF5 tornado. The old record-longest streak was an eight-year period 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.

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 buildings in the area built strong enough to begin with to meet the standards of EF5 damage on the EF scale then 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.

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 rather than a sign of anything meaningful meteorologically speaking.

“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 after the Joplin 2011 tornado, only 22 of those sustained EF5 damage, according to the damage survey.

There have been several damaging and deadly EF4 tornadoes recently. On March 24, a violent tornado tore an almost 60-mile path through northern Mississippi, including the towns of Rolling Fork and Silver City, and killed 17 people.

While rated EF4, NWS-Jackson’s Chad Entremont told weather.com that rating is still preliminary as of the time this article was published.

“We’re still working through damage analysis and these things take time and involve multiple people,” Entremont said.

Other recent EF4 tornadoes included one in March 2022 near Winterset, Iowa, that killed six people, and a pair of long-track EF4 tornadoes from southeast Missouri into western Tennessee and Kentucky, including the town of Mayfield, during the Dec. 10, 2021 outbreak.

These 10 years have been deadly. There were 472 deaths from tornadoes in the U.S. since the Moore EF5, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.

As we covered in a previous article, tornadoes rated EF3 or lower still accounted for just under half of all deaths in the U.S. from 2000 through 2021.

And tornadoes rated EF2 or EF3 accounted for the large majority of tornado deaths in the U.S. so far in 2023, according to NOAA/SPC.

So don’t get hung up on this 10-year streak without an EF5 tornado.

It’s an interesting statistic, but even without an EF5, these past 10 years without one prove just how serious you should take tornado threats.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM:

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Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Severe Thunderstorm Warnings

Which States Get Hit by the Biggest Tornado Outbreaks? Here’s the Surprising Answer

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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