Over its history, the St. Louis area has been a tornado hotbed, with numerous funnels making their presence known. Dating back as far as the early 1870s to 2025, many proved deadly and catastrophic, while others were only a footnote in history. In this summary, we discuss the sixteen twisters officially documented within St. Louis proper.
One of the most devastating tornadoes to ever hit the state of Virginia was spawned by Hurricane Gracie on September 30, 1959. The twister tracked through a part of Albemarle County west of Charlottesville and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This summary provides a detailed analysis of discrepancies in the path and the number of tornadoes to hit this day. It also focuses on the tragedy near Ivy. In mere seconds, ten members of one family lost their lives.
A very strong, long-track tornado made it ways through parts of Hampden and Worcester Counties, Massachusetts on June 1, 2011. The path length was just shy of 38 miles and the width grew to a half mile. Per the NWS survey, the estimated max wind speed was 160 mph.
On June 23, 1944, a historic tornado outbreak occurred across the Appalachians. This outbreak featured the deadliest tornado to ever strike Pennsylvania and the deadliest ever recorded in West Virginia.
1200 homes and businesses sustained varying degrees of damage. 101 of the 1200 were totally destroyed and 573 sustained major damage. Heavy damage occurred to Apollo High School, Kentucky Wesleyan College and a Winn-Dixie. Numerous automobiles were tossed.
Main Writer Nick Wilkes documents the violent tornado outbreak that hit parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario on May 31, 1985.
On April 10, 2009, a significant tornado outbreak raked across portions of the South. This summary will focus on a tornado that skipped its way through the rolling terrain of northeast Alabama. This event had initially been documented as a single long-tracked EF3. However, due to lengthy research and satellite analysis, we proposed two separate tornado paths, with an approximate 2.2-mile damage gap near and along the Jackson/DeKalb County line.
An F3 tornado ripped through southern Warren County on the evening of May 31, 1985, causing severe damage in and around Tidioute and the Allegheny National Forest. The tornado, spawned by the same supercell that produced the Kane F4 twister, left a path of destruction nearly 19 miles long, injuring eight people and destroying 32 structures. Despite the significant damage, it is relatively overshadowed.
On August 25, 1992, just one day before Hurricane Andrew made its third and final landfall, the towns of LaPlace and Reserve, LA were struck by one of the strongest tornadoes ever produced by a hurricane. This twister, spawned by the outer bands of Hurricane Andrew, carved a nine-mile path through both communities late in the night. Tragically, it took the lives of two people and 32 were injured.
During the early evening of April 3, 1974, as tornadoes ravaged the Midwestern region of the U.S., new dangerous storms were firing in the southeast. Among them, a supercell in northeast Alabama produced one of the first significant tornadoes in the state that evening in the Coosa Valley region along Weiss Lake. The F3 twister severely impacted small lakeside communities along its path of just under 21 miles. Ultimately, no one was killed. A combined effort between locals and outsiders who all called this region home, rallied to restore their beautiful landscape, and the lives impacted.
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