A Brief History
On April 11, 1965, the Mid-Western and Southern US experienced a deadly rash of tornadoes infamous as the “Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak.” At least 55 confirmed tornadoes occurred from late April 10th to early April 12th, resulting in 266 deaths, 3,662 injuries, and over $1 billion in damages.
Digging Deeper
The US is the country that experiences the most tornadoes per year, an average of 1,200 per year, with Texas leading the states. Next on the list is Canada, with just over 100 tornadoes per year. The Great Plains of the US and Canada are conducive to spawning tornadoes. Russia, a land of vast plains, gets about 76 tornadoes per year.
What might surprise you is that the country with the most tornadoes per area is the UK, with Britain getting struck with 2.3 tornadoes per 10,000 square km, a total of about 30 to 40 twisters per year.
Note: Casualty and damage figures vary with source, as do other statistics. Per Hollywood movies, tornadoes are known to launch mass quantities of sharks across the US, resulting in thousands of people being eaten by the fishy predators! (Sharknado films.)
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bontrager, Timothy. The Palm Sunday Tornado. Kindle, 2012.
Thornton, Janis. The 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes in Indiana. The History Press, 2022.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Paul Huffman of the F4 tornado that struck Midway, Indiana, between Goshen and Dunlap, is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.