440+ tornadoes reported so far in 2026

The twister that struck near Enid, Oklahoma, this past Thursday received a (preliminary) EF-4 rating from the National Weather Service. This was the strongest tornado confirmed so far in 2026.

Tornado activity across the United States is running slightly ahead of pace for this point in the year, which is unusual given that most of the activity has avoided parts of the southeast where you’d expect bad storms to lurk in March and April.

Between January 1 and April 24, we’ve seen around 448 confirmed tornadoes from California to Vermont.

I say “around” 448 because that might be a slight overcount due to the way the NWS reports tornadoes. Paths that cross from one office’s area of responsibility to another are sometimes (temporarily) counted as two tornadoes in these damage surveys.

Those tornadoes include…

• EF-5: 0
• EF-4: 1
• EF-3: 6
• EF-2: 37
• EF-1: 225
• EF-0: 153
• EF-Unknown: 26

Here’s a closer look at the bulk of those tornado tracks:

It’s very unusual to see so many tornado tracks across the Midwest this early in the season; activity usually waits until the summer months to start lifting north. This is largely due to the prominent ridging we’ve seen over the southeastern states during the past couple of months, which is responsible for shunting the active storm track farther north.

We’re likely going to see these numbers tick up over the next couple of days as our active pattern produces several additional rounds of severe weather across the Plains and Midwest states.

The U.S. usually experiences a peak in tornado activity around the beginning of June.