The reference page for the strongest tornadoes on Earth — updated as ratings change.
Has there been an EF5 tornado in 2026? Yes. On March 10, 2026, a tornado in Wells County, Indiana earned the Enhanced Fujita scale's top rating — only the second EF5 in the United States since 2013, and the first EF5 ever recorded so early in the calendar year. This page is the standing record: every EF5 since the scale began, what the rating actually measures, why the top of the scale once went quiet for twelve years, and what the current year looks like.
An EF5 is a tornado whose damage indicates winds over 200 mph — the top of the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale that the National Weather Service adopted on February 1, 2007, replacing Dr. Ted Fujita's original F-scale from 1971.
The detail most people miss: tornadoes are rated by damage, not by measured wind. Survey teams walk the path after the storm and match what they find against standardized damage indicators. The signature of EF5 damage is a well-built, well-anchored home swept completely off its foundation — a clean slab. That has two consequences worth understanding:
Eleven tornadoes have earned the EF5 rating since the Enhanced Fujita scale took effect:
Four of the eleven came on a single April afternoon in 2011 — a concentration of violence unmatched in the modern record.
The original Fujita scale rated roughly 50 US tornadoes F5 between 1950 and 2007. The names that still define the category:
Counting both scales, roughly 60 tornadoes have earned the top rating since official US records began in 1950 — averaging less than one per year.
Between Moore in May 2013 and the North Dakota tornado of June 2025, not one US tornado was rated EF5 — the longest gap at the top of the scale in the official record. The drought had two competing explanations. One is meteorological luck: violent tornadoes kept missing the well-built structures needed to prove 200+ mph damage, and several high-end EF4 ratings from those years (including tornadoes surveyed within a few mph of the line) are still argued about. The other is rating conservatism: many researchers contend survey standards effectively tightened, and that storms from the drought years would have been rated EF5 a decade earlier.
Then the top of the scale came back — twice in nine months. The June 2025 North Dakota EF5 broke the drought, and the Wells County, Indiana EF5 of March 10, 2026 followed. An EF5 in early March is virtually unheard of: the Wells County tornado is the earliest-in-year EF5 on record, and it adds to growing evidence that violent-tornado season is expanding earlier into the calendar. The full outbreak analysis covers the six-day event that produced it — 30+ tornadoes, ten rated EF2 or higher, 12 killed.
Track every significant tornado as it happens
DisasterAWARE turns NWS damage surveys, warning polygons, and storm reports into decision-ready intelligence — for every hazard, worldwide.
This section is updated when NWS damage surveys change the record.
An EF5 is not just a bigger EF4. At 200+ mph, engineered safety margins fail: reinforced buildings lose structural integrity, mobile assets become projectiles, and the survivable options narrow to purpose-built shelters and below-grade refuge. For organizations with facilities, employees, or supply chains in tornado country, the operational questions are the ones damage surveys answer too late: which sites sit in a warned path right now, what did the storm actually hit, and what does the historical record say about any given location's exposure.
That's the gap DisasterAWARE closes. Warning polygons, local storm reports, and NWS damage-survey data stream into the platform as structured events — the same pipeline that mapped all ten significant tornado paths of the March outbreak within days — and decades of verified tornado history are queryable per location through Historical Event Intelligence. City-level views like tornado risk in Phoenix or Boston put live alerts and historical exposure on one page, and the tornado monitoring guide covers the real-time alerting workflow.
Explore the historical record
Decades of reconstructed, verified catastrophes — browse the Historical Event Intelligence overview, or request sample data for your own portfolio.
Has there been an EF5 tornado in 2026? Yes. The Wells County, Indiana tornado of March 10, 2026 was rated EF5 by NWS damage survey teams, with winds in excess of 200 mph over a 14.6-mile damage path. It is the only EF5 of 2026 so far, and the earliest-in-year EF5 on record.
When was the last EF5 tornado before 2026? June 2025, in North Dakota — the tornado that ended the twelve-year "EF5 drought." Before that, the last EF5 was the Moore, Oklahoma tornado of May 20, 2013.
How many EF5 tornadoes have there been? Eleven since the Enhanced Fujita scale took effect in February 2007. Counting the original F-scale era, roughly 60 US tornadoes have earned the top rating since official records began in 1950 — fewer than one per year on average.
What wind speed is an EF5? Damage indicating winds over 200 mph. Because ratings are based on surveyed damage rather than measured wind, a tornado must strike well-built structures to prove EF5 intensity — one reason the rating is so rare.
What is the strongest tornado ever recorded? By measured wind, the Bridge Creek–Moore, Oklahoma tornado of May 3, 1999: mobile radar recorded about 302 mph near the ground, the fastest wind ever observed on Earth. By death toll, the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, which killed 695 people across three states.
What's the difference between F5 and EF5? The original Fujita scale (1971) estimated winds from damage with F5 defined as 261–318 mph. The Enhanced Fujita scale (2007) recalibrated the wind estimates against engineering studies — EF5 means winds over 200 mph, with far more rigorous damage indicators. The storms are comparably violent; the science of estimating their winds improved.
-min.png)
.png)
.png)
Decision-ready intelligence for understanding what's happening, what is impacted, and what to do next. Global hazard, severe weather, catastrophe, and physical risk intelligence trusted by governments, enterprises, insurers, humanitarian organizations, and technology platforms worldwide.
Request DemoContact Us
