About TornadoLookup

TornadoLookup is a clean lookup interface to the NOAA Storm Events Database, the official record of severe weather events in the United States.

Where the data comes from

Every event you see here was recorded by a National Weather Service forecast office at the time it happened. The database is maintained by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and is freely available as bulk CSV files.

Each event has a narrative written by an NWS meteorologist describing what happened: where the tornado touched down, how the supercell organized, how many homes were destroyed. Those narratives are public-domain and reproduced here verbatim.

What's covered

This site indexes 1950 through 2025: every tornado, hurricane, hail event, severe thunderstorm wind, flood, winter storm, drought, and other significant weather event in NOAA's record. Coverage in early years is sparser — before the mid-1990s the database is mostly tornadoes, and before 1996 there are no event narratives. The post-2007 records use the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF0–EF5); pre-2007 tornadoes use the original Fujita scale (F0–F5).

Caveats

The NOAA database has known biases. Smaller events that nobody reported don't appear. Damage estimates are point-in-time and not inflation-adjusted. Some entries are by NWS forecast zone rather than civil county. Older events have less precise coordinates than modern ones.

Official tornado tracks and damage assessments are published by the local NWS office, often weeks after the event. Where the database has been updated, this site reflects the latest version.

Other lookup sites

Part of a small portfolio of clean lookup tools for government open data.