Although severe tornadoes are rare in December, the cluster that hit at least six states on Friday was not unprecedented.
Here’s a roundup of some notable tornadoes and tornado clusters that have hit the United States in December.
2000
A band of tornadoes ripped across Alabama, killing 12 people; the deadliest of the storms struck a Tuscaloosa trailer park and an upscale neighborhood nearby.
2015
Tornadoes pummeled Mississippi, Tennessee and several other states before Christmas, causing more than a dozen deaths, and reducing homes and businesses to rubble.
Dallas also experienced a deadly outbreak of nearly a dozen tornadoes later that week that left 13 people dead, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database, sweeping across more than 100 miles. It was the deadliest tornado system to hit the Dallas area since 1927, the National Weather Service wrote in a post on Twitter at the time.
2018
Stormy weather coincided with the Christmas season again, when a rare tornado touched down in Port Orchard, just west of Seattle, and several low-intensity tornadoes touched down in Florida, damaging more than 70 homes in a mobile home park.
Earlier that month, tornadoes also swept through central and southwest Illinois; at the time, the National Weather Service called it the state’s largest December outbreak since 1957.
On the same day, a tornado struck a motel in Lawrence County, Mo., according to the NOAA database, leaving one man dead.
2019
A day of multiple tornadoes mid-month, across four Southern states, left three people dead, according to the NOAA database, in Lawrence County, Ala., and Vernon Parish, La.
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