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Which state gets the most tornadoes?

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Guess

Which states get the most tornadoes in a typical year? Tap them most-to-least.

Tapping assigns 1→4 in order

In The Wizard of Oz, a twister carries Dorothy’s house away from Kansas… so Kansas has to be #1! 🌪️🐾

Answer

The real order is…
    Texas gets about 1.36× as many tornadoes a year as #2 Oklahoma — and Mississippi is only a hair behind Oklahoma in third. Biscuit’s pick, Kansas? Eighth. Tornadoes are not just a Great Plains thing.
    📚 Background In The Wizard of Oz, a twister carries Dorothy’s house away from Kansas — but the state with the most tornadoes is Texas! NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory calls Tornado Alley “a nickname invented by the media” and says the idea can be misleading: the U.S. tornado threat shifts from the Southeast in the cooler months, to the southern and central Plains in May and June, to the northern Plains and Midwest in early summer. And sure enough, two Southeast states, Mississippi and Alabama, also make the top five. 🤔 Our own guess (NOAA does not say this): Texas is also enormous, so part of its lead may simply be that it has more ground for a tornado to touch down on. (NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, Severe Weather 101: Tornado Basics) (opens in a new tab)
    🔍 Explore more: 🌪️『How do scientists tell how strong a tornado was?』→
    In The Wizard of Oz, a twister carries Dorothy’s house away from Kansas… so Kansas has to be #1! 🌪️🐾

    Compare

    Tornadoes per year (average of 2016–2025, counted in the state where each one touched down)

    Texas #1 111.7 tornadoes a year
    Most: Texas (111.7 tornadoes a year). Fewest: Hawaii (0 tornadoes a year) — not one tornado touched down there in these 10 years.

    Note: these are the tornadoes in the National Weather Service’s official records — tornadoes that were seen or found and confirmed. Each tornado counts once, in the state where it touched down, even if it later crossed into another state. To smooth out busy years and quiet years, this is the average of the 10 years 2016–2025. NOAA’s storm scientists say spotting and reporting have changed a lot over the decades, so today more of the tornadoes that actually happen get counted. The 50 states are shown; the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are not ranked. NOAA NWS Storm Prediction Center, Severe Weather Database.

    Texas: tornado champion! 🌪️🐾

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    📋 See the ranking table (top 50)
    Tornadoes per year (average of 2016–2025, counted in the state where each one touched down)
    Rank State Value
    #1 Texas 111.7 tornadoes a year
    #2 Oklahoma 81.9 tornadoes a year
    #3 Mississippi 81.6 tornadoes a year
    #4 Illinois 74.6 tornadoes a year
    #5 Alabama 69 tornadoes a year
    #6 Iowa 63.9 tornadoes a year
    #7 Louisiana 61.9 tornadoes a year
    #8 Kansas 55 tornadoes a year
    #9 Florida 52.7 tornadoes a year
    #10 Missouri 49.8 tornadoes a year
    #11 Georgia 48.5 tornadoes a year
    #12 Minnesota 48.3 tornadoes a year
    #13 Nebraska 43.9 tornadoes a year
    #14 Colorado 40.2 tornadoes a year
    #15 Arkansas 37.1 tornadoes a year
    #16 Ohio 36.6 tornadoes a year
    #17 Indiana 33.1 tornadoes a year
    #18 Kentucky 31.8 tornadoes a year
    #19 Tennessee 29.5 tornadoes a year
    #20 North Carolina 29.1 tornadoes a year
    #21 Wisconsin 28.7 tornadoes a year
    #22 South Carolina 27.3 tornadoes a year
    #23 North Dakota 25.3 tornadoes a year
    #24 Pennsylvania 23 tornadoes a year
    #25 South Dakota 19.9 tornadoes a year
    #26 Virginia 15 tornadoes a year
    #27 Michigan 13.5 tornadoes a year
    #28 New Mexico 11.5 tornadoes a year
    #29 New York 11 tornadoes a year
    #30 Wyoming 9.7 tornadoes a year
    #31 Maryland 6.9 tornadoes a year
    #32 California 6.1 tornadoes a year
    #33 Arizona 5.8 tornadoes a year
    #34 New Jersey 4.6 tornadoes a year
    #35 Montana 3.8 tornadoes a year
    #36 West Virginia 3.6 tornadoes a year
    #37 Massachusetts 3.4 tornadoes a year
    #38 Connecticut 3.1 tornadoes a year
    #39 Oregon 2.9 tornadoes a year
    #40 Washington 2.2 tornadoes a year
    #41 Idaho 2 tornadoes a year
    #42 Utah 1.9 tornadoes a year
    #43 Delaware 1.4 tornadoes a year
    #44 New Hampshire 1.1 tornadoes a year
    #45 Maine 1 tornadoes a year
    #45 Nevada 1 tornadoes a year
    #47 Rhode Island 0.7 tornadoes a year
    #48 Vermont 0.5 tornadoes a year
    #49 Alaska 0.1 tornadoes a year
    #50 Hawaii 0 tornadoes a year

    Source: NOAA National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center (2016–2025 average)

    Sources

    Data as of: 2016–2025 average
    NOAA NWS Storm Prediction Center: Severe Weather Database — tornadoes, 1950–2025 (actual tornadoes file), years 2016–2025 (opens in a new tab) (2026-10-11) — Official published records. In this file each tornado is one row, listed under the state where it touched down; we count the rows for each state over 2016–2025 and divide by 10. Rounded to whole numbers (halves rounded up), these averages match SPC’s own published map “Average Annual Number of Tornadoes per State, 2016–2025.” The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are in the file but are not among the 50 states ranked.
    ↳ On the SPC Severe Weather Database page (spc.noaa.gov/wcm), download “1950-2025_actual_tornadoes.csv”, keep the years 2016–2025, and count the rows for each state (column “st”). SPC’s map of state averages for 2016–2025 is on the same page.