The 2011 Joplin tornado was a large and devastating rain-wrapped tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, United States, on the evening of Sunday, May 22, 2011. Part of a larger late-May tornado outbreak, the EF5 tornado began just west of Joplin and intensified very quickly, reaching a maximum width of nearly one mile (1.6 km) during its path through the southern part of the city. The tornado tracked eastward through Joplin, and then continued across Interstate 44 into rural portions of Jasper and Newton counties, weakening before it dissipated.
The tornado devastated a large portion of the city of Joplin, damaging nearly 8,000 buildings, and of those, destroying over 4,000. The damage—which included major facilities like one of Joplin’s two hospitals as well as much of its basic infrastructure—amounted to a total of $2.8 billion, making the Joplin tornado the costliest single tornado in U.S. history. The insurance payout was the highest in Missouri history, with the previous record of $2 billion being the hail storm of April 10, 2001.
Overall, the tornado killed 158 people (with an additional eight indirect deaths) and injured some 1,150 others. It ranks as one of the United States’ deadliest tornadoes: it was the deadliest U.S. tornado since the April 9, 1947, F5 tornado in Woodward, Oklahoma, and the seventh-deadliest in U.S. history.[11] It was the deadliest tornado in Missouri history, as well as the first single tornado since the 1953 Flint–Beecher tornado in Michigan to cause more than 100 fatalities.[12] It was the first F5/EF5 tornado to occur in Missouri since May 20, 1957, when an F5 tornado destroyed several suburbs of Kansas City,[13] and only the second F5/EF5 tornado in Missouri since 1950.[14] It was the third tornado to strike Joplin since May 1971.[15]
