On This Date: The Moore, Oklahoma, EF5 Tornado
May in the central and Southern Plains is a notoriously volatile month for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, as recent history has illustrated.
On May 20, 2013, 12 years ago today, a supercell thunderstorm spawned an intense tornado that tore a 14-mile path from Newcastle to the city of Moore and the south side of Oklahoma City.
This up to 1.1-mile wide violent tornado claimed 24 lives, injured another 212 during its 40-minute rampage through central Oklahoma. Seven of those deaths occurred at Plaza Towers Elementary School, when a wall collapsed.
Over 300 homes sustained at least EF4 damage, according to the NWS-Norman survey. Damage to nine of those homes, however, was rated EF5, the highest level on the Enhanced Fujita scale for tornado damage. Each of those homes were swept off their foundations. Damage to the Briarwood Elementary School a second school hit that day, was also rated EF5. Miraculously, no deaths occurred at this second school.
Damage from the tornado was at least $2 billion.
Twelve years later, it remains the most recent tornado to be rated EF5 in the U.S. A recent study found that may be due as much to the more stringent engineering criteria of the Enhanced Fujita scale compared to the pre-2007 Fujita scale. In essence, it appears a destroyed building had to be built beyond standard construction codes to be rated EF5 today.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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