Talk:List of tornadoes by width

Found a list that we could use

There's a top 10 list doing the rounds on some tornado-related discussion boards that mention some exceptionally wide tornadoes that have yet to be added to this page. It looks pretty legitimate and sources are provided for every entry.

The document also includes a "hearsay" section for tornadoes that are claimed to have exceptional path widths (such as the 1810 Laurens County tornado) but were either surveyed as having a lesser path width or none at all.

It's definitely worth taking a look at. Mabolzich169 (talk) 17:23, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Top 10 Widest Tornadoes Mabolzich169 (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Updating the current List

As the clean-up notice has already pointed out, multiple different measurement methods are being mixed here, which can lead to a misleading understanding. For the first place, the Mulhall tornado (1999) and the Timber Lake tornado (1946), the radar-based tornadic circulation widths were listed, whereas for all subsequent entries the official damage path width is used. These are two very different aspects of a tornado’s structure. Furthermore, some data are based on older and therefore likely partly inaccurate studies, so revisiting the sources would be recommendable.

My suggestion for the clean-up would be either to use the official damage path width consistently as the primary value, with the radar-based tornadic circulation width noted in parentheses, or to present both as separate lists. This would also require a correction of the ranking. The rationale is that the damage path width is being used, because it is officially recognized by the NWS as the standard measurement, whereas the radar-based tornadic circulation width is much less precisely recorded and often guessed and should therefore be weighted less in these rankings, or it should be hinted at such.

Any thoughts on this? Viiccoo (talk) 19:18, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm definitely for this, if anything this page would definitely benefit from being split into two separate lists, the first being a list of officially surveyed path widths and the second being a list of values from other sources or hearsay.

I would easily get to work on this using the information from that "top 10" list I found and posted in this thread last year, especially since whoever made the list sourced everything from tornadoarchives, I just hate to have it all undone by someone who isn't on board with the idea and still thinks Mulhall being 4.5 miles wide is a thing.

This page also gets more and more messy as the path widths get narrower, I would limit this page to tornadoes 1.5 miles wide and larger. Mabolzich169 (talk) 04:56, 28 November 2025 (UTC)

A big problem in general is the lack of newer study and or revision inclusions amongst tornado topics on social media or like here on Wikipedia.

The Mulhall tornado (1999) is mostly regarded as problematic through lacking major evidence in support of the 4,3 miles. Especially because it is often disregarded that the scans were surveyed in 50 to 200 meters above ground by a DOW in 55s intervals and that there was no clear edge of the windfield, but rather having a smooth transition into the RDF, which didn’t help in tracking the complex multi vortex structure. Which is why it’s often noted that the scan likely included the RDF. The actual reason why the Mulhall scan was widely used amongst meteorologists was the breakthrough in DOW scanning by Wurman, as it was the first time that high resolution scans were made of a rotation, which was used to find the theoretical capacity of large thunderstorms. So while the 4,3 miles are officially recognised in the scientific discus, they are not comparable with recognised windfields by the National Weather Service based on damage surveys.

Also notable is that another massive F3 tornado has hit crescent 1,5 hours later at 10.56 pm, that made damage surveys in some areas very difficult, which is why the National Weather Service included real time reports of storm hunters, in order to differentiate between the paths, but even their combined damage path, the damage surveyed in Mulhall and reports of eye witnesses had no further indications of a 4 miles+ wide windfield.

For example, during the El Reno Tornado (2013), RaXPol scans were used to help define the damage path, something the National Weather Service turned down back then for the Mulhall tornado (1999). Furthermore it is widely discussed, that the El Reno tornado (2013) probably would have been even bigger than the Mulhall tornado (1999) if the same benchmarks were used.

Also noteworthy is, that the el Reno tornado (2013) could have been up to 3,6 miles wide, based on the World Meteorological Organisation, but there were to few damage indicators and data to safely assign it to the tornado. The Mulhall tornado (1999) was missing such beyond the 1,5 mile damage path even with damage indicators.

In conclusion I think the 4,3 miles should likely only be noted in parentheses to the 1-1,5 mile wide damage path with a throughout explanation, since all other entries have a windfield that is backed up by the damage path, while the Mulhall tornados scans were not only not near ground level, but very speculative in the first place.

what do you think? Viiccoo (talk) 16:25, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

2019 Peggs EF2 Tornado

The 21:29-21:56 (CST) May 20, 2019 Peggs, Oklahoma EF2 tornado was 2,700 yards/1.534 miles wide. Can someone add it please? Lavabite (talk) 21:14, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 May 2026

2026 Little Springs–Brookhaven tornado Armadilloisbestanimal (talk) 17:53, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want made. Please detail the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Day Creature (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2026 (UTC)