the strongest tornados in recorded history

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]All right. When I was younger, I was both fascinated and terrified of tornadoes and thunderstorms, but specifically tornadoes because of how abnormal they are. Tornadoes are one of the only natural disasters that feel like they shouldn't exist. A giant rotating tube stretching through from the sky and touching the ground, deleting whole neighborhoods and everything within seconds. That doesn't feel like it should be real, but it is real. Today, I found some of the worst tornadoes in recent recorded history, so you don't have to. So, let's begin.

[00:00:31]Before we begin, what even causes tornadoes? Good question. First, you need warm, humid air near the ground, which is basically the storm's initial fuel. Then, above the ground, you need colder, drier air. When both the warm, humid air and the cold, drier air layers meet, the warm air tries to rise violently like it's trying to escape.

[00:00:53]Those are the two foundations on what causes a tornado. Which just goes to show how close tornadoes are to forming very often because we all know what this feeling is. That feeling after when it stops raining where it's super humid and hot, but then moments later as you drive it gets more windy and cold. But tornadoes, fortunately, need a little bit more than that. They need something called a wind shear, which basically means the wind needs to move at different speeds and different directions depending on how high you go.

[00:01:20]So on the ground, the wind might be moving one way, but then the higher up you go, the wind is moving another way.

[00:01:26]That creates an invisible horizontal spinning tube. And then a thunderstorm pulls that spinning air upwards. And then the clouds above you start twisting, the air pressure drops, the wind around you go silent, the sky turns dark, and then boom, you see a twisting tube of mass destruction spinning through the sky. So now, as you can clearly see, it's a very natural phenomenon that can't be stopped or controlled. So, one of the scariest tornadoes that have happened in recent history happened in Smithville, Mississippi on April 27th, 2011. I need to make my bed. Before the tornado even formed, April 27th, 2011 was already one of the worst weather days in all of American history. It was so bad that day. This is what the weather looked like back on April 27, 2011. It was bad for basically about half of the entire United States. And it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. But the place that got the worst of it at that time was Mississippi. It was dark. It was rainy. The atmosphere over the south basically was stacking every single ingredient on top of each other for what is required for a tornado. But the thing is, it happens a lot. But a tornado isn't formed every single time. But this time near the ground, it was warm and the air was humid. There was cold air above the ground. The winds were changing speeds in every direction as you go higher. There was crazy thunderstorms passing by already. And by the end of that date, over 199 tornadoes would touch down across 14 different states and over 300 people would die on that April 27th with a few of those tornadoes being classified as an EF5 tornado. Now, what is an EF5 tornado?

[00:03:00]That is the highest most deadly ranking possible for a tornado. For perspective, here is an EF chart. An EF0 tornado is where the damage is light and the wind speeds go up to 65 mi. Nothing crazy.

[00:03:12]EF5, on the other hand, is where it's truly destructive, where the winds go up to 200 to 300 mph plus, and the destruction is catastrophic. Smithville got hit with an EF5, and it's already a small town. So, at 3:44 p.m., the EF5 tornado formed with an estimated wind peak of 205 mph, destroying about 35.1 mi worth of destruction, with the tornado having a width of 0.75 mi. Do you have any idea how unbelievably wide that is? Since it was a small town, it quite literally nearly wiped it out of existence. Now, this is where it gets crazy. Right now, I'm just throwing numbers at you and showing what the tornado looks like for perspective. But this tornado was so abysmal, it doesn't even sound real. It sounds like it's not even physically possible. One of the houses had a 1965 Chevy pickup truck parked outside, which is a 3,750 lb car. It got picked up and thrown into the tornado and it was never found. It was not found upside down somewhere. It was not crushed in some random field or in a ravine or in a tree. It quite literally disintegrated into complete oblivion. Just gone. If the tornado did that to a 3-tonon car, just imagine what it did to the houses made of wood and light bricks. It deleted them. Houses started vanishing off the ground. Parks started vanishing. Trees that were hundreds of years old started flying into the air. Stores, post offices, whole police buildings, water systems, everything got deleted in the span of a few hours. So, there is obviously a tornado warning and the people who didn't evacuate in time had little time to think. So, inside the homes, people only had seconds to react. But, of course, at wind speeds that fast, it's not enough time. People ran into their bathrooms, they lock the door like that does anything. like the tornado is just going to come inside the house, unlock the door, and then come inside. They hid into their bathtubs. They went into their basement. Everything deleted. So, this is what the siren sounded like that day.

[00:05:15]Oh, hell no. Oh, hell no.

[00:05:21]Oh, yeah. I for sure would think that the world is ending if I was there.

[00:05:33]Holy, that's terrifying. One of the strongest tornadoes ever. My house is gone. I was at my friends. Oh my god.

[00:05:40]Can you believe that? You go to your friend's house just to hang out, just to play some Call of Duty. You come home and then your house is just gone.

[00:05:47]Unbelievable. So, this was the aftermath. People's whole roofs were taken off. These people got it easy compared to some of the people. This is obviously extremely rough, but there's some people who got their whole houses picked up off the floor and thrown into the air. Like, look at this. What is this? Oh my god. Yo, this guy does not realize he needs to get the hell up out of there as fast as possible. Oh my god. I live in Yazu City. We were hit on April 24th, 2010 by a devastating E4. What was going on that week? That was nearly 2 mi wide. Small towns are the backbone of the country.

[00:06:23]It's very hard to recover from such a devastation. I pray that you folks can put together a plan that works in the age of billion dollar bailouts of corporations. There seems to be little left for small towns that suffer like this. It really hurts. Damn. I remember when we heard about Smallville. Dozens dozens and hundreds of people from Philadelphia drove over each day to help clean up. A lot of the guys from my school skipped to drive over there. I remember we kept it up for about four to 5 weeks. Okay, I want to see more footage of the actual tornado. Oh my god. Yo, that's so crazy.

[00:06:59]>> Man, you got to see this debris up in there.

[00:07:02]>> Yo, these guys are just laughing. Do they not realize >> I hope it's going 15 years ago. What can you do?

[00:07:08]>> It is. It's now. It's starting to roll back.

[00:07:10]>> Yo, I don't know if any of you have ever seen a tornado in person. This video does not do it justice. Anyways, okay.

[00:07:17]Here's another video I found.

[00:07:21]Oh my god.

[00:07:24]Like look how far in the distance the tornado already is when it had already destroyed this area probably like an hour prior.

[00:07:36]Holy [ __ ] Yo, let's not forget about the fact that tornadoes actually cause fires with certain destruction and th those flames can catch on to the tornadoes. Flaming tornado. Like look at this. This is only a small one. Can you imagine? Oh my god. Okay, let's move on.

[00:07:53]I'm getting a little bit distracted.

[00:07:55]Another tornado with even more footage than this happened in Oklahoma. Now, this tornado was only an E F3 tornado.

[00:08:03]So, it was level three on the scale, but it should have been much higher, especially when you see the footage and you see the destruction that it caused.

[00:08:11]This happened on May 31st, 2013 in El Reno, Oklahoma. There is such thing as stormchasers. They're just as crazy as those cave divers. Don't even get me started on cave divers. Just look at this quick video of someone diving into a cave. You know, this is completely optional, by the way. So, what stormchasers do, they will try to get all up and close to the tornado to take insane pictures like this one, and then they will try to drive out of there as soon as possible. They fundamentally understand tornadoes well enough to be able to try and minimize the danger that they're in, but not completely get rid of it. They are professionals. But this tornado in El Reno was so powerful and so deadly that stormchasers got caught in this tornado because this tornado was a trap. It wasn't functioning like a normal tornado. It was levels more destructive and deadly. So on this day on May 31st, the National Weather Service, the people who are able to give warnings for these tornadoes said that this was the most powerful tornado sampled by a mobile radar. It was like screaming at them to run. This tornado managed to reach 2.6 mi wide or this many kilm. The last one was 0.75 mi wide. This one was 2.6 mi wide. Brother, do you know how crazy that is? Look, tornadoes are what I imagine would take place on Earth when the end of the world is here. Just tornadoes everywhere the size of like 10 km. The warning for the tornado was done a lot of time in advance. So, the people managed to evacuate, but it still managed to kill eight people and injure 26. So, this is footage of the actual stormchasers that day. These people survived.

[00:09:46]>> It's about 330.

[00:09:48]>> Some didn't.

[00:09:48]>> We are sitting in Chicochet, Oklahoma.

[00:09:52]Uh, very >> All right, let's check this out.

[00:10:00]Oh my god. Look at how fast the clouds are moving. I found the better video that I'm going to show after this that actually puts it into perspective how fast the clouds are moving. Oh, hell no.

[00:10:11]So, this is where they start to go closer. Don't know why.

[00:10:15]Seriously, I don't know why anyone would want to go closer to this.

[00:10:23]He's coming RIGHT NOW.

[00:10:31]HURRY. How can you even see where you're driving?

[00:10:34]>> You're good. You're good.

[00:10:36]>> You're good. You're good.

[00:10:37]>> You're good.

[00:10:39]>> Totally good.

[00:10:40]>> You're good. I can see.

[00:10:43]>> I'M OKAY.

[00:10:44]>> YES. JUST DRIVE DOWN.

[00:10:47]>> REMEMBER, you're good. You're good.

[00:10:50]>> That's fine, dude. Just go.

[00:10:51]>> Just go.

[00:10:53]>> I can't stay on the ground.

[00:10:54]>> That's fine.

[00:11:00]>> You okay? YEAH, >> you're fine.

[00:11:05]>> Did they just get hit by a car and the first thing that he says is, "You're fine." How?

[00:11:11]What the [ __ ] is going on? What are these humans? What did he just get hit by? He just got hit by a car.

[00:11:19]>> You're fine.

[00:11:22]>> What? What is this video?

[00:11:25]>> GET DOWN. BACK DOWN. BACK DOWN.

[00:11:28]YO, they're still driving closer to it.

[00:11:33]>> You're good.

[00:11:35]>> I don't think you're good.

[00:11:38]>> Oh [ __ ] >> Okay, now they're getting out of there.

[00:11:44]>> Go, Brent. Go.

[00:11:46]>> Yo, he's driving with the windows down.

[00:11:48]These people are crazy. These people are just crazy. Okay, let's go on to the next piece of footage. So, this video puts it into perspective on how wide the tornado actually gets.

[00:12:01]Oh my Oh my god.

[00:12:05]Oh my god.

[00:12:12]Yo, I would be [ __ ] bricks.

[00:12:16]>> Yo, it's just pitch dark, brother.

[00:12:22]Yo, I don't think you could reverse fast enough to get out of there, bro.

[00:12:29]>> Okay, look how fast the winds are going.

[00:12:33]>> Okay, that was the road about 5 miles due south of Reno. This tornado, which now appears to be at least a mile wide multiple vortex tornado, is you're seeing it on Yeah, you're seeing it on the stream right now. It just obliterated a good portion of the airport >> airport. Hold on. I got to check on that tornado aftermath airport. Oh my god. It destroyed the airport. Oh my god. Yo, look what it did to this poor vehicle.

[00:12:58]Like, was Batman inside this tornado?

[00:13:01]What the What the [ __ ] is this vehicle tossed and destroyed in the El Reno tornado May 31st, 2013? Yeah, really?

[00:13:10]I thought that this car just got into a car accident or something like what?

[00:13:14]What the? Of course. Okay, I'm being a little bit pissy. This is unreal.

[00:13:19]Literally destroying everything it touches. Like it's crocodile from One Piece inside. Tumbling trapped inside the tornado. Keep going if you can.

[00:13:29]Everybody hold on brothers. Hold on.

[00:13:36]Everybody jump. Go. Go. Go. Just keep going if you can. Keep going if you can.

[00:13:39]Everybody duck down. Everybody got down.

[00:13:46]>> You want to wait for an ambulance?

[00:13:52]All right. I'm I'm like at a loss for words right now. I'm supposed to be speaking words as we're watching this, but like I can't help but be a little bit at a loss for words. Let's check out the aftermath. L Renault tornado 2013 aftermath. There's piles and piles of debris here and more EF4 EF5 damage somewhere around 200 mph.

[00:14:14]>> I don't know if I could show this video's volume without saying anything because they're just going to completely just me execute me. But I'll speed up the video just so we can take a good look. Yo, this is unbelievable. Actually unreal. Okay, anyways. Um I think I've explained it well enough why I was so interested, fascinated, yet terrified of tornadoes. Cuz look at what it can do in the blink of an eye. And it's a natural thing that the earth does. Like, oh my goodness. Anyways, you want to see me make a part two of this video, you know what to do. Go check out these videos if you enjoyed this one. I'm dropping these quarter zips later this month. I will see you later.