The deadliest tornado in US history claimed 695 lives

“Then the air was filled with 10,000 things. Boards, poles, cans, garments, stoves, whole sides of the little frame houses, in some cases the houses themselves, were picked up and smashed to earth. And living beings, too. A baby was blown from its mother’s arms. A cow, picked up by the wind, was hurled into the village restaurant.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch Newspaper, March 20, 1925.

On March 18, 1925, a massive supercell thunderstorm traveled across southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, spawning at least one tornado and claiming an unfathomable 695 lives. By far the deadliest twister in U.S. history, the record still stands today. A total of 234 lives were lost in Murphysboro, Illinois, when the town was destroyed by the tornado.

The event earned the nickname “The Tri-State Tornado” and, at 219 miles on the ground, is one of the longest continuous paths of a tornado. However, documentation isn’t complete for that entire track, and research performed more recently shows that the path was likely several different tornadoes.

The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Paducah, Kentucky, says both the start and end points of the tornado’s supposed 219-mile track are in question, and there are breaks in the track at both ends. A study in the early 2000s concluded that 151 miles of the track were likely continuous.

Even if that is the case, 151 miles is still an impressive record. TornadoArchive.com says only 13 other tornadoes since 1950, and three others before that, were longer. The longest tornado on record in that database was one on March 22, 1953, that tracked 234.7 miles from Louisiana into Mississippi.

Some of those tracks could also exhibit breaks indicating that more than one tornado caused the damage, but research hasn’t delved as deeply into those twisters, as it has into the Tri-State Tornado.

Another study in 2013 said the original 219-mile length was improbable because the parent storm would have had to have been a supercell thunderstorm, a massive storm that cycles tornadoes, one after the other, with short breaks in between.

The monster Tri-State Tornado is colloquially believed to have been EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, though without enough photographic evidence, it’s unlikely that could ever be proven. The twister is not part of the Storm Prediction Center (SPC)’s official database which began in 1950.

No photos or videos exist of the tornado, which may have been wrapped in rain or debris, making it hard to see, but photos taken of the aftermath make it the most widely documented tornado at the time.