On This Date: The Joplin EF5 Tornado
In a spring of historic tornado outbreaks, a single late May tornado in southwest Missouri was the mic drop on a truly terrible 2011.
On May 22, 2011, 14 years ago today, an EF5 tornado tore a six-mile long and up to mile-wide path of devastation through Joplin, Missouri.
One hundred fifty-eight people lost their lives directly due to the EF5 tornado, the nation's deadliest tornado since 1947, which was before tornado warnings were routinely issued.
Its damage scar was difficult to put into context, even by many experienced meteorologists.
(MORE: What Our Meteorologists Haven't Forgotten About Joplin)
"The western half to two-thirds of the track featured defoliated and debarked trees, scouring, parking blocks scraped from the ground with the rebar and deposited well away from parking lots, a lot of debris loading as it progressed," John Gagan, science and operations officer at the NWS office near Milwaukee, and a forecaster at the Springfield, Missouri, NWS office at the time of the tornado, told weather.com in 2021.
According to an NIST report, 553 businesses and 7,411 homes were damaged or destroyed, affecting than more than 17,000 residents. The tornado produced about 4.1 million cubic yards of residential and commercial debris, according to "32 Minutes in May," a book published by the Joplin Globe.
The Joplin tornado remains the costliest single tornado in modern U.S. history, with damage estimated at $3.98 billion (adjusted for inflation to 2025). It was one of 48 tornadoes on May 22, including an EF1 in the Minneapolis metro that claimed one life.
A mid-April South and Carolinas outbreak was followed less than two weeks later by one of the nation's worst Super Outbreaks. This boosted April 2011's tornado tally to a record for any month in the modern era (758).
Just two days after Joplin, a May 24-26 outbreak of 186 tornadoes killed 18 in the Plains and South, including an EF5 tornado through El Reno, Pedmont and Guthrie, Oklahoma.
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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