The Most Iconic Photos Of U.S. Tornadoes And The Stories Behind The Images

This photo is regarded as the first photo
taken of a tornado. It was in April, 1884 in
Garnett, Kansas. Photo by A.A Adams

Tornado season is ramping up. Every year, we get dramatic photos and videos of the tornadoes that show their power, their terror, sometimes their horrible beauty. You just hope nobody got hurricanes in all the chaos. 

Over the years, some tornadoes create iconic images that last forever and are referenced by experts, whether geeks and others as incredibles bits of history. 

Here are some of the most iconic images of tornadoes over the years. 

FIRST PHOTOGRAPH

There are many candidates vying for the first photograph of a tornado ever taken.  Almost all of those candidates have been proven to be fakes, or so altered that they really don't depict what was going on.

But one widely recognized photo is considered the first one. It shows a long, skinny funnel extending out at an angle from a dark cloud. It looks like a tornado that's "roping out." That means the tornado is beginning to dissipate. It stretches out and gets narrow until it falls apart. 

Unlike other supposed first tornado photos, this one taken by a fruit farmer named. A.A Adams makes sense. The clouds look like they would in a "normal" tornado, not some idealized version of one. The tornado hit Garnett, Kansas on April 26, 1884. It damaged some homes and barns and supposedly carried a man and his wagon through the air, injuring him. 

This doesn't mean the danger is over. Supercell thunderstorms sometimes cycle tornadoes. One dies, and later on, a new one will develop.

I don't know if that's the case with this one. 

Worcester, Massachusetts, June 9, 1953:

The Worcester County, Massachusetts
tornado on June 9, 1953

The statistics on this tornado are incredible: 94 people were killed, 1,288 were inured. At least 4,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The tornado was up to a mile wide and plowed through 45 miles of central Massachusetts. Debris from the tornado was thrown as far away as Cape Cod. It was easily the worst tornado in New England history. 

This was a Midwest style, highly destructive wedge tornado. It looked very much like the famous 2013 EF-5 in the Oklahoma City area, and not something that could ever happen in New England. But it did. 

The photo is striking because you see that classic Plains wedge shaped twister with an equally classic looking large New England farmhouse in the foreground. The dichotomy between the tornado and the house its incredibly striking

The photo, taken by Henry LaPrade, also shows the classic wall cloud/mesoscale supporting the tornado from above.  

As bad as Worcester tornado was, it was even the whole story.  The day before Worcester was hit, he  same storm system created an F5 tornado that devastated the northern part of Flint, Michigan and the suburb of Beecher, killing 116 people and injuring 844. A photograph of the Flint tornado is eerily similar to the Worcester tornado pictured here. 

1953 was a horrible tornado year. Earlier that spring, on May 11, another powerful tornado swept through Waco, Texas, killing 114 people

Goshen, Indiana, April 11, 1965

The double tornado image taken during the Palm Sunday
Tornado outbreak in 1965. This was in Goshen
Indiana. Photo by Paul Huffman. 

This one is from the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak on April 11, 1965. This double tornado was photographed by Paul Huffman in Goshen, Indiana. 

Huffman worked at the Elkhart Indiana Truth, the local paper. That day, he was driving down Route 33 with his wife when the saw a towering black cloud. At first they thought it was a fire.

They then realized it was a tornado. Huffman never left the house without his camera, so he pulled it out, went outside the car and starting taking pictures. Huffman kept himself steady in the intenser winds by swinging his leg around his car's bumper.

Hid photo, including the famous double tornado image  and others he took that day, are at this link. 

Judging from his other photos, I'm not 100 percent convinced he photographed two tornadoes. Intense tornadoes often have multiple vortices within them. Essentially tornadoes within tornadoes. It looks like the photo captured two intense vortices within the parent tornado. 

Huffman, however, the storm contained two distinct funnels as it went through, so I can't be sure what happened. 

This tornado moved on to blast through a mobile home park. Later that day, a second intense tornado would go through the same mobile home park.  Thirty-three people died in that mobile home park. Huffman also took heartrending photos of rescuers trying to help the injured in the immediate aftermath of the tornado, 

It was part of the large Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965, one of the worst in modern history. Around 50 tornadoes killed 271 people and injured more than 3,500.  Indiana was hardest hit, and the tornado outbreak is still the worst in Indiana history. 

Topeka, Kansas, June 8, 1966

One of Perry Riddle's photos showing people fleeing
a Topeka, Kansas F5 tornado in 1966.

Up until this time, this was the most expensive tornado on record for the U.S. The F5 twister  cut though the heart of Topeka, damaging much of downtown, including the dome of the State House. More than 800 homes were destroyed and 3,000 damaged. 

The tornado caused more than $200 million in damages, in 1966 dollars. That would be more than $2 billion in 2026 dollars. 

Seventeen people lost their lives in the process. The photo to me is iconic a it shows what appears to be a Midwestern family scrambling for shelter, with the large, black tornado looming behind them. The shadows cast by the clouds and the tornado almost turn the family into silhouettes, making the image all the more foreboding. 

The photo was taken by Perry Riddle as people ran for cover into the Countryside United Methodist Church at 3221 SW Burlingame Road. I was unable to determine whether the tornado hit the church, but the lean of the tornado funnel suggests that it missed that location. 

Riddle took numerous photos of the tornado from that church parking lot, and they are amazingly high quality, especially for 1966.  You can see the other photos in the second half of a YouTube video at this link. 

Xenia, Ohio, April 3, 1974.

Terrifying image of an F5 tornado tearing through
Xenia, Ohio in April, 1974. Image the hour inside
that black maelstrom

The massive tornado here was part of the Super Outbreak of 1974, which was the worst swarm of tornadoes in American history until the next Super Outbreak in April, 2011. 

The outbreak produced 148 tornadoes in the 13 states and Ontario, Canada.  Thirty of them were F4s or F5s, the strongest type. The outbreak caused 335 direct fatalities and injured 6,000 people.

Probably the worst tornado in the outbreak struck Xenia, a city of about 25,000 people in southwest Ohio.  This one reminds me of the Joplin, Missouri tornadoes years later, as both cut through the heart of a small city. In both cases the tornadoes reached maximum strength while cutting through the middle of the communities.  

The photo was taken by Fred Stewart, the public information director at Greene Memorial Hospital. He was also a photography buff. He took the photo through a window on the second floor stairwell at the hospital. The window looked out over the Pinecrest Gardens neighborhood of Xenia

The following information comes from the April 6 1974 edition of the Xenia Daily Gazette. 

"'It looked like it was going to come straight to the hospital,' he said. 'But then it veered off and hit Pinecrest Gardens. The air was filled with debris. I shot four frames before I headed back to the basement.'

 The photo is terrifying as you know just beyond the parking lot, in that black maw of a terrifying tornado, death and ruin is raining down on that neighborhood. 

Makes me sad every time I see the photo. 

 Fridley,  Minnesota, July 18, 1986

Screen shot of a Minnesota tornado filmed from a
traffic helicopter in 1986.

This wasn't exactly the most notable or extreme tornado. But it was the start of a media trend in which video cameras were becoming much more portable, easier to use, and allowed for more daring storm chasing. 

That day, a traffic helicopter with KARE in Minneapolis was able to follow a tornado in Brooklyn Park and Fridley, about 15 miles north of Minneapolis. It is the first known, widely distributed video of a tornado taken from the air. 

The footage was dramatic, with the tornado yanking trees out of the woods and flinging them far outside the twister. It's still one of the more dramatic tornado videos out there. Which is saying something considering we're now in the age of drones and remote videos that can really uncover some amazing tornado image. 

This particular tornado was rated an F2, and damaged a few dozen buildings. 

Andover, Kansas, April 26, 1991

Image is a little fuzzy because it's a screen grab from a 
video, but Duke Evans' video of an EF-5 tornado
in Andover, Kansas was considered the best video
up until its time of a powerful tornado.
The twister passed just behind that row of houses.
The occupants had to be terrified.

Affordable camcorders had become popular in by around 1990, allowing far more people to easily film and share footage of events. That included tornadoes  near tornadoes. 

On April 26, 1991, a tornado outbreak in the central United States produced at least 55 tornadoes, resulting in 21 deaths. The most powerful and destructive of the tornadoes was an F-5, the strongest kind, in Andover, Kansas. 

Duke Evans took out his camcorder and filmed more the six minutes of the Andover tornado's rampage. At the tine it was considered the highest quality tornado footage ever produced. I imagine the film was studies by many tornado experts and in meteorology classrooms everywhere. 

The most terrifying part of the video is when it goes just behind a row of houses. If anyone was in those houses huddling in a closet or basement, the screaming roar of the tornado must have shaken them to their bones. 

Since then, now that we're in the age of everyone having a camera phone, it seems almost every tornado is well documented. But Evans' was the first in a cottage industry: America's Most Terrifying Tornado. 

We'll revisit Andover and another tornado later in this post. 

Jarrell, Texas, May 21, 1997

The Jarrell, Texas tornado as it was developing.
Multiple vortices - mini tornadoes within the main
tornado are visible, giving a dead man walking
looks to the storm, The tornado became extremely
powerful and essentially stalled over a subdivision
killing 17 people 

This was a tragic, weird and largely unexpected F5 tornado that hit the community of Jarrell, Texas. Although some severe thunderstorms were forecast that day, nobody expected a powerhouse twister like this one in the community about 40 miles north of Austin. 

The photo of the tornado is called "Dead Man Walking" and you can see why. The photo was taken while the tornado was rapidly powering up to it F5 status. 

As I mentioned above in the Palm Sunday, 1965 piece, powerful tornadoes often have multiple vortices. Essentially tornadoes spinning within the parent tornado. 

The photo was taken by Scott Beckwith as he stood outside the building housing his employer, Jarrell Farm Supply. 

He caught the beginning stages of the tornado, when it began as a narrow, almost harmless looking rope, to the Dead Man Walking photo that because famous. 

Knowing what happened after the photo was taken, the tornado with its vortices inside it really looks  a sort of grim reaper heading toward a neighborhood to take a lot of lives.

Which is precisely what this tornado did.  It headed slowly southwestward, the opposite direction of most tornadoes. 

A typical tornado's forward speed is about 20 mph and can be 50 mph or more in some instances. The powerful F5 tornado then did the worst thing possible. It essentially stalled over the Double Creek Estates Subdivision. It sat there crawling forward ever so slowly through  the subdivision, with its 260 mph winds, for three minutes. 

The people in the subdivision's houses never stood a chance. 

The winds were so strong, and lasted so long, that every piece of several homes was swept completely away from foundations and ground to small pieces. Some construction material was pulverized down to dust. Asphalt was lifted off the street and blown away. Cars blew half a mile or more away from where they had been parked. 

The destruction was arguably the most extreme of any tornado seen in the United States. 

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, April 27, 2011

The Tuscaloosa, Alabama tornado of April 27, 2011 seemed
to have tentacles coming out of it 

While many years since 1974 had more than the usual number of tornadoes, it seemed the days when tornadoes killed several hundred people in a single year seemed in the past. Then came 2011.  That year, 553 people died in U.S. tornadoes. Only the year 1925 had more tornado deaths.  

Many of these deaths occurred in what I'd call the Super Duper Tornado outbreak of April 25-28. 2011. This one far outdid the famous 1974 Super Outbreak with tragic results. 

According to the Weather Channel:

"An incredible 349 tornadoes were spawned in just 72 hours April 25-28, according to NOAA. While the Deep South - Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee - bore the brunt o fit, tornadoes tore through parts of 21 states from Texas to central New York. 

According to the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, 929 tornado warnings were issued by 44 different National Weather Service offices from April 25-29."

Also, 199 tornadoes occurred on just one day - April 27. The normal amount of tornadoes in the U.S. during the entire month of April is 194. 

The Tuscaloosa, Alabama tornado during this outbreak really stands out. It wasn't the strongest of the outbreak as there were four EF-5 tornadoes and the Tuscaloosa storm was "only" an EF-4 with top winds of ???

This tornado claimed 65 lives along an 80-mile path from Greene County, Alabama, through Tuscaloosa  and into the northern suburbs of Birmingham, the Weather Channel notes. Despite the very high death toll, the fact that this powerful tornado rolled through such high populated areas speaks well to the warnings from the National Weather Service and local television stations.

A fascinating aspect of the visuals on this tornado were the horizontal vortices wrapping around the tornado. You see that sometimes in the most ferocious tornadoes. It always makes me think these tornado are sentient monsters with tentacles trying to pick people off the streets. 

Joplin, Missouri, May 22, 2011

The view out a van window as their occupants were trying
desperately to flee the EF-5 Joplin, Missouri tornado in
2011. If you click on the photo to make it bigger and
if you look closely, you can see the tornado looming
just a very short distance away 

The horrible tornado season of 2011 wasn't done after the Super Duper Outbreak. On May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado slammed through Joplin, Missouri, a city of about 50,000 in southwest Missouri. 

The tornado killed 161 people, making if the deadliest tornado since 1953 and the nations seventh deadliest on record. 

The tornado also showed what a monster tornado can look like, and how it can give people who are used to big storms a false sense of security. 

The tornado was wrapped in rain, and just looked like a big ugly black cloud approaching. It seemed to be a nasty storm looming, for sure, but not the cataclysm it turned out to be.

There's a haunting must-see YouTube video taken from inside a van with several knowledgeable storm chasers inside. They know that black mass looming behind the buildings they are passing is a highly dangerous tornado. The van load of storm chasers know they have to get out of the way very quickly or they will be hit and quite possibly killed by the twister.

Their escape is hindered by people keeping to routines as if death was not looming in that black cloud. 

The notes on the YouTube video say:

"It is interesting to note that many drivers on the road were completely oblivious to the sirens, and were driving and texting on their cellphones instead of observing the approaching tornado and trying to get out of its path. Most of us felt sick afterwards, but it actually sank in a few hours/days later as we really had no idea what was actually happening in Joplin."

Part of the reason the video is so haunting is because many of the buildings that the van drove past were reduced to ruins moments later. Subsequent videos of the aftermath proved that.  

 The people in the van are increasingly panicked as the tornado closes in,  but they manage to get onto Interstate 44 and speed away from the twister in the nick of time. 

That photo of the black mawing mass looming over Joplin still gives me chills.  

Andover, Kansas, April 29, 2022

An incredible still from a wild video taken via drone
and produced by famed storm chaser Reed Timmer

Just three days after the 31st anniversary of the immense tornado of 1991, Andover, Kansas was struck again. And like the earlier tornado, new technology offered a stunning fresh look at the power of a twister. 

This one was an EF-3 when destroyed several homes and damaged other buildings. The tornado was on he ground for 21 minutes and tracked 12.8 miles. 

But the dry stats on this tornado don't give nearly the amazing vision of what tornadoes can do. Prominent tornado chaser Reed Timmer incredibly captured the tornado ripping up houses from a drone he launched nearby. 

The resulting video from Timmer is absolutely jaw dropping. The best footage is at the beginning as the well-lit tornado pulls roofs from a series of houses in the neighborhood. At one moment, the roofs of three adjacent houses lift off simultaneously. A white snow of insulation fills the air, as does a maelstrom of boards, roofing material and other debris. 

Just incredible what a tornado can do, especially when viewed from the air 

 Crystal Lake/Gary, South Dakota, June 28, 2025

The "Dancing Tornado" in Gary, South Dakota last year

This one is called the dancing tornadoes. Tornadoes come in all kinds of shapes and sizes: Funnels, wedges, stovepipes, ropes, drill bits, you get the picture. Individual tornadoes also change their shapes during their lifetime.  

This one in South Dakota last year was a real shapeshifter.  It starts out with a classic stovepipe shape. Then in quickly turned into a rope, which is usually a sign a tornado is about to dissipate. 

But this time, the rope thicken again. And for the lack of a better description, the ropey tornado danced. Sort of wiggled as it moved across the countryside.

Click this link to view the dancing tornado.

As cool and interesting as this tornado was, it wasn't all fun and games. It was an EF-3 twister, with wind speeds of 155 to 165 mph. It traveled nearly ten miles, damage several properties. A farm house, garage, two machine sheds, a barn and grain bins were completely destroyed. A half ton pickup truck was hurled 300 yards.

South Dakota gets plenty of tornadoes but not many are as strong as the "dancing tornado." Statistics show South Dakota had 1,931 twisters between 1950 and 2024 but only 75 of those were EF-3 or greater. 

We're not getting into the heart of tornado season. There's already been plenty of horrifying and wild photos and videos of tornadoes and their aftermaths this year. And unfortunately for the victims of these storms, there's more tornado pictures coming over the next several weeks 

 

You Have To Watch Pecos Hanks' Storm Videos. Exhibit # 9,999,990

Storm chaser, storyteller and musician is back with another
 great storm video that's much more than a storm video. 

There's tons of weather porn out there. 

No, not XXX-rated stuff. No sex, no naked bodies. Sorry, this is a family weather blog. 

Weather porn is videos of extreme weather, usually storms to entice and excite weather weenies like myself. Heck, I indulge in making what I call soft weather porn for my YouTube channel. Soft core because storms don't usually get as wild in Vermont as they do in other parts of the nation. 

But at least Vermont weather tends to be pretty. 

The videos I make, amateurish as they are, still tend to be satisfying to make and I hope satisfying to watch.

Then there are the big time storm chasers. 

Some of them are rather loud, with a lot of shouting. I have mad respect for Reed Timmer and his extreme storm videos, since he has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. But he gets so excited he yells an awful lot, and my ADHD-addled brain has trouble handling that. 

And there's iCyclone, whose real name is Josh Morgerman, who travels the world to enter the eyes of as many hurricanes and typhoons as he can. The results come in unbelievable, amazing footage. And if you want a master class in calmness amid extreme chaos, he's your guy. 

Then there are the incredibly stupid storm chasers, of which there are many. These are the idiots who drive right into tornadoes, pretend to be police officers to clear the path for their own "videography," the ones that cause traffic jams to block escape routes if a tornado makes an unexpected turn, drive at 90 mph and on the wrong side of the road to capture their video, innocent crash victims be damned.

And then there's Pecos Hank, the most unique storm chaser out there, and easily my favorite. I've touted this guy before in this here blog thingy and I have to do it again.  I just hope he doesn't think I'm stalking him.  

The reason I bring all this up is because Pecos Hank  just released a video reflecting on his storm chasing exploits of 2022.

As always, what I love about this latest video is it's not just dramatic storms and tornadoes, though there's plenty of that.  His videos are so good because he doesn't just show clips, he tells a story in his easy Texas drawl. And he's quirky as hell. 

One incredibly endearing aspect of his videos is he's constantly rescuing animals of the creepy crawly variety from rural roads so they don't get run over by cars. 

He's such a fun narrator. In one part of his recent video, he highlights a relatively anemic tornado that has suction vortices, which are min-tornadoes within the main twister. His description: "As this weak tornado passed overhead, a carousel of suction vortices was on the ground terrorizing prairie dogs and flinging grasshoppers."

You cannot get any better cinematography, narration and creativity than that in a storm video.

When you get away from Pecos Hanks' dry humor and look at the cinematography, it's occasionally almost on the level of famed storm videographer Mike Olbinski

Pecos Hank is also an accomplished musician. He uses some of his storm footage in his music videos, such as in "Drive Under The Moon."  He also uses his music in some of his storm videos, like the review of 2022 tornadoes that I've been talking about.

 At one point, he uses the broken nozzle of a Do-It-Yourself car wash slapping against the machine in the wind on a stormy day to establish the beat for a song he sings toward the tail end of the video. 

Here's his Tornado of 2022 video. Click on this link or click on the image below if you see it to view, 

  

  

Wild Kansas Tornado Destroyed Part Of Neighborhood; Drone View Is Incredible

In a still from Reed Timmer's fascinating drone video
of a tornado in Andover, Kansas last Friday, the roofs
of three adjacent houses get sucked up into the 
twister almost simultaneously, center of frame. 
Click on the image to make it bigger and
easier to see.

 Parts of it have been on the news for a couple days now, but you should really check out famed storm chaser Reed Timmer's drone view of a powerful tornado that struck suburbs of Wichita, Kansas on Friday. 

This tornado was different from many you see in the media. Often, tornadoes are partially or fully wrapped up in rain, making them a little difficult or just impossible to see. 

This one, like some you see in the Plains was in clear air. It even looks like the sun was shining on it. 

We also think of major tornadoes as these big, black, wedge-shaped things that roar across the landscape. This was a tall, skinny one that one make an untrained eye think it wouldn't be capable of much damage.

Narrow tornadoes can be incredibly dangerous, though.  The one in Timmer's video shows how powerful they can be.

As horrible as this tornado was, it's fascinating to watch.  I'm making you click on the links to watch it so the clicks go to Timmer's YouTube channel. I don't want to steal his thunder, so to speak. 

Like many strong tornadoes, this one had what are known as suction vortices, which are essentially tornadoes circulating within the main tornado.  Suction vortices are very often what cause the most damage in a tornado.

At the start of the video, you can't really see these suction vortices until they hit a house or building as it mows through Andover, Kansas.

Then the debris and dust makes these vortices obvious.  You can also see the powerful lift this tornado has, lifting roof after roof straight up into the air. At one point, the roofs of three adjacent houses take off almost simultaneously. 

At about 40 to 50 seconds into the video, you see the funnel up above and those suction vortices wrecking the neighborhood. One of those vortices coils up, looking a bit like a curly fry. 

 The first couple of minutes of the video were a wise choice by Timmer, who gives us the same shot three times, one close up, one at mid range and one at further away. This gives you the full perspective on how the tornado behaved in and around Andover. 

This video is going to be studied by meteorologists and structural engineers for years to come. Suction vortices come and go quickly, and I'm sure scientists will be examining this video to learn more about them. 

Those suction vortices are sneaky, too, and should give pause to any storm chasers who want to get too close.  At about 2:47 in, you see the tornado doing its thing, and suddenly, a building and electrical equipment to the left get sucked into the maelstrom. That was a suction vortex that was invisible until building debris got entrained into it. 

Late in Timmer's drone video, you have distant shots of the tornado. You can see how tall, thin, and yes, graceful it was, in a weird sort of way. 

The National Weather Service office in Wichita, Kansas says the tornado was an EF-3 with maximum winds of 165 mph. But you can see from the video how the suction adds to the destruction.  Miraculously, the tornado caused only three injuries and no deaths. Well-timed warnings by the National Weather Service kept the casualty count low. 

The maximum width of the tornado was 440 yards, which isn't huge. And that damage swath encompasses the outer edges of the tornado, where damage wasn't as bad. Judging from videos of the damage, the intense winds that destroyed homes were encompassed an area only about 300 yards wide. 

If Andover, Kansas makes you think of another tornado disaster, you're right. Friday's tornado hit on just two days after the anniversary of an even worse twister that hit Andover and nearby McConnell Air Force Base. 

That tornado, on April 26, 1991 was an F5 that killed 17 people. That 1991 tornado was a much more "traditional" looking one that appeared as a dark wedge that swept through the town.