My Top Ten Tornado Outbreaks since 1950 (Nationwide)

I am really bored tonight, so I am going to go through the annals of the past 56.232876712 years of tornado history by posting my list (with reasoning added in future days) of the ten worst tornado outbreaks since 1950. One tornado will not put an outbreak on a list. The overall severity of each outbreak was considered, along with the location of the outbreak in relation to the severity.

10. May 25th, 1955: This day brought terrible tragedy to two towns on the plains: Blackwell, Oklahoma, and Udall, Kansas. Both towns were hit by terrific F5s. According to the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, twenty people were killed as the giant funnel hit the eastern portion of town. Strangely, according to the National Weather Service report, the funnel was of a glowing nature as it struck Blackwell. The same storm dropped a tornado near the Kansas/Oklahoma state line. This tornado would take a strange path to the north, directly striking the small town of Udall after they had been informed that the threat was over. Eigthy people died, according to the National Weather Service office in Wichita, Kansas.

National Weather Service Norman report on Blackwell tornado
National Weather Service report on the Udall tornado

9. February 22nd-23rd, 1998


8. April 10th, 1979


7. April 26th, 1991


6. May 4th, 2003


5. May 3rd, 1999


4. April 21st, 1967: This outbreak may not be the most widely-known outbreak, nor is it near the most severe on this list. This outbreak is the outbreak that first gave us an idea of what kind of tragedy can occur when violent tornadoes strike modern day metropolitan areas. This outbreak would produce four violent F4 tornadoes. Of those, three would be in very highly-populated Northern Illinois, two in either the suburbs of or the city of Chicago. The first would strike the city of Belvidere in Boone County, just east of Rockford. The largest tornado in Northern Illinois that day, it would strike Belvidere High School right at dismissal. The buses outside were loaded with the elementary and middle students. Some high school students leaving the building were caught outside during the tornado. Thirteen died at the high school, twenty-four along the entire path. The next extremely violent tornado struck the northwestern suburbs, especially Lake Zurich. Amazingly, only one person was killed. The greatest tragedy would come with the last violent tornado of the day. This extremely violent nearly-F5 tornado touched down in the southwest suburb of Palos Hills and moved northeast. It continued at sixty miles per hour all the way onto Lake Michigan (exiting onto it at 79th Street) where it struck a water intake station a mile out onto the lake. That intake station recorded a 100 mile-per-hour wind gust. Thirty-three people were killed by this tornado, with many of those deaths at a skating rink and the intersection of 95th Street and Southwest Highway, both in Oak Lawn. That tornado and the Plainfield tornado of August 28th, 1990, have set the precedents for tornadoes in the Chicago area. My mom's cousin grew up in Oak Lawn at the time of the tornado. She lived near the corner of 83rd Street and Knox Avenue. She, with her parents, watched the massive tornado pass just blocks south of them. This tornado, however, still has not rid Chicagoans of the idea that the lake protects us from tornadoes. This, as this tornado perfectly exemplifies, is absolutely not the case. One day, another tornado of this caliber will happen in this area again, and I shudder to think about what happens when it does...


3. May 31st, 1985


2. April 11th, 1965: There is nothing disputable about the ranking for this nightmarish outbreak. At least forty-eight tornadoes touched down in six states (Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio); of those, thirty-eight were F2 or greater, and, according to Significant Tornadoes by Tom Grazulis, seventeen were F4 and two were F5, making for nineteen violent tornadoes. The accepted death toll is 256. The two F5s struck Dunlap, Indiana (which had been hit by a massive F4 just a short time prior), and Strongsville, Ohio. I will end this with the link to a page by Blake Naftel, which may be the best page for a specific tornado outbreak in history.

Blake Naftel's Palm Sunday tornado outbreak page


1. April 3rd-4th, 1974