As broken records go, this is a happy one. The United States has now gone an unprecedentedly long time between tornadoes rated EF5, the highest rankin

It’s been a record-long time since the last EF5 tornado. What does that mean?

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2021-05-30 17:30:10

As broken records go, this is a happy one. The United States has now gone an unprecedentedly long time between tornadoes rated EF5, the highest ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, the gold-standard technique for assessing a tornado’s strength based on the damage it wreaks. Unfortunately, as with the stock market, recent performance does not guarantee future behavior.

As of Tuesday, May 25, 2021, it had been eight years and five days since the nation last saw a tornado rated EF5 by the National Weather Service. This broke a record-long quiet spell in a National Weather Service database going back to 1950, taking into account F5 tornadoes on the original Fujita-Pearson Scale as well as EF5s on the Enhanced Fujita Scale that debuted in 2007. (Ratings from the F and EF scales denote comparable damage, but estimated winds are lower on the EF scale.)

The previous record-long gap lasted from May 3, 1999, when a catastrophic F5 tornado slammed Moore, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, until May 4, 2007, the date an EF5 destroyed much of Greensburg, Kansas.