PlainHazard

National comparison · NOAA Storm Events Database

Tornado risk by state

Texas has recorded the most tornado events of any state, with 1,787 events across the NOAA Storm Events Database's recorded history. This ranking covers all 53 states and territories with at least one recorded tornado event.

Texas
Most tornado events
1,787
Texas tornado events
19,464
Total events nationwide

How concentrated are the events

Texas accounts for 9% of all NOAA-recorded tornado events among the 53 states and territories in this ranking, and the top three states combined, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, account for 23%. This is a raw event count, not adjusted for state land area.

9%
of nationwide tornado events are in Texas alone
23%
of events concentrated in just the top 3 states
53
states and territories covered in this ranking

A raw event count is not a per-square-mile risk measure; see the per-state detail pages for context.

What this ranking measures

NOAA's Storm Events Database records individual tornado events by state and year. This page sums the recorded event count for each state and ranks the highest totals first. It is a count of past recorded events, not a forecast and not a normalized per-capita or per-area risk measure — a large state can rank higher simply from more land area and more NOAA-monitored events, independent of any single location's actual exposure.

12 states with the most recorded tornado events

Total recorded tornado events, NOAA Storm Events Database

tornado events

What this shows Texas has recorded the most tornado events of any state in the NOAA Storm Events Database. The table below shows every state and territory with at least one recorded tornado event.

Source NOAA Storm Events Database

Full tornado-risk-by-state ranking

States with the most recorded tornado events rank first. The last column shows recorded tornado fatalities.

# State Tornado Events
1 Texas TX 1,787
2 Mississippi MS 1,397
3 Oklahoma OK 1,255
4 Illinois IL 1,138
5 Alabama AL 1,115
6 Iowa IA 923
7 Kansas KS 829
8 Louisiana LA 813
9 Missouri MO 777
10 Georgia GA 747
11 Minnesota MN 723
12 Florida FL 687
13 Nebraska NE 586
14 Arkansas AR 579
15 Colorado CO 528
16 Ohio OH 495
17 Kentucky KY 487
18 Tennessee TN 487
19 Indiana IN 482
20 Wisconsin WI 423
21 North Dakota ND 405
22 North Carolina NC 376
23 South Carolina SC 359
24 Pennsylvania PA 296
25 South Dakota SD 287
26 Virginia VA 207
27 Michigan MI 202
28 New Mexico NM 139
29 New York NY 128
30 Wyoming WY 121
31 Maryland MD 96
32 California CA 81
33 Arizona AZ 80
34 New Jersey NJ 59
35 West Virginia WV 48
36 Massachusetts MA 44
37 Montana MT 44
38 Oregon OR 34
39 Connecticut CT 32
40 Utah UT 27
41 Washington WA 26
42 Idaho ID 24
43 Delaware DE 20
44 New Hampshire NH 16
45 Maine ME 11
46 Nevada NV 11
47 Puerto Rico PR 10
48 Rhode Island RI 9
49 Vermont VT 7
50 District of Columbia DC 4
51 Alaska AK 1
52 Hawaii HI 1
53 U.S. Virgin Islands VI 1

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database Tornado event records Recorded events depend on NOAA's monitoring and reporting coverage, which has expanded over time. Earlier decades may undercount events relative to more recent years.

Every figure on PlainHazard is rendered directly from FEMA federal disaster data, no number is typed in by an editor. This ranking sums NOAA Storm Events Database tornado records by state. It labels the aggregation rather than presenting it as a forecast or a per-capita risk measure. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or national statistics report, or report a data error.