Tornadoes in Dallas: 350 Since 1952, and Two Days That Tie for Worst
The Dallas–Fort Worth metro has recorded 350 tornadoes since 1952 and 29 deaths. Its two deadliest tornadoes tie at 10 killed each — the 1957 Dallas Tornado, one of the most important tornadoes in the history of the science, and the Garland–Rowlett EF4 that hit the day after Christmas in 2015. The metro has never seen an F5.
Pull the NOAA Storm Prediction Center archive for the Dallas–Fort Worth metro and it returns 350 tornadoes since 1952 — about five a year across Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton counties. That is fewer than Houston (430) but far more violent per storm: DFW has produced 15 F3s and two F4s, while Houston has managed only one F4 in 74 years.
And the metro’s worst days come in a strange pairing. Its two deadliest tornadoes each killed exactly 10 people — but they fell 58 years apart, one in spring and one in the dead of winter. Together they explain why DFW’s tornado threat is both more dangerous and harder to predict than the calendar suggests.
The strongest and deadliest DFW tornadoes
From the SPC record for the metro box. Location labels come from each tornado’s touchdown coordinates; SPC totals run slightly under press tallies because the archive counts confirmed segments only, and our box is wider than the tighter definitions some aggregators use (which report closer to 205).
| Date | Area | Rating | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2, 1957 | West Dallas / Oak Cliff The "Dallas Tornado of 1957" — filmed by hundreds of people for its entire life and used to launch modern tornado photogrammetry. One of the most scientifically important tornadoes ever recorded. | F3 | 10 |
| Dec 26, 2015 | Garland–Rowlett A rare, violent day-after-Christmas tornado that crossed the President George Bush Turnpike; most of the dead were motorists thrown from the elevated highway. The metro’s only EF4/F4 since 1994. | EF4 | 10 |
| Apr 25, 1994 | Lancaster Tore through the historic square of this southern Dallas County suburb — the metro’s other F4. | F4 | 3 |
| Mar 28, 2000 | Downtown Fort Worth Struck downtown Fort Worth at rush hour, blowing out high-rise windows in the Bank One tower. | F3 | 2 |
| Dec 26, 2015 | Collin County (NE metro) A second killer tornado from the same Dec. 26, 2015 outbreak. | F2 | 2 |
| Oct 20, 2019 | North Dallas No deaths, but roughly $1.55 billion in damage (NCEI) — the 6th-costliest tornado in US history. It struck a dense urban corridor at night. | EF3 | 0 |
| May 9, 1993 | Plano / Allen (Collin County) | F2 | 1 |
| Dec 13, 1984 | SE Dallas County | F3 | 0 |
Of the metro’s 350 tornadoes, 153 were rated F0 and another 119 were F1 — about 78% were the weakest two categories. Only 17 in 72 years reached F3 or higher.
The 1957 Dallas Tornado: the one that changed the science
On the afternoon of April 2, 1957, an F3 tornado tracked up the west side of Dallas, from Oak Cliff across the Trinity River bottoms and out toward the northwest. It killed 10 people and injured about 200. But its lasting importance was not the damage — it was the cameras. The tornado stayed in view of a densely populated city in clear afternoon light for its entire life, and hundreds of residents filmed and photographed it.
Researchers led by the U.S. Weather Bureau later assembled those films into one of the first detailed photogrammetric studies of a tornado, reconstructing its wind field, rotation and debris behavior frame by frame. The 1957 Dallas Tornado became a foundational data set for tornado science and is still cited in textbooks. No tornado before it had ever been documented so completely.
The December killer: North Texas’s cool-season threat
Most of the country’s tornado risk is dormant by late December. North Texas is the exception. On December 26, 2015, an EF4 touched down near Sunnyvale and tore through Garland and Rowlett after dark, crossing the President George Bush Turnpike and throwing vehicles from the elevated highway. Ten people died, most of them motorists, and 468 were injured — the deadliest tornado in the modern DFW record, tied with 1957.
It was not a fluke. DFW sits far enough south that Gulf moisture can return in winter, and when a strong cold front and jet stream arrive over that warm, humid air, the metro can produce fast, dangerous supercell tornadoes in months when residents have stopped thinking about them. October, November and December together account for 72 of the metro’s 350 tornadoes — a genuine second season that Plains metros farther north do not share. Overnight, off-season tornadoes are the most dangerous kind, because people are asleep and not watching the sky.
DFW’s tornado calendar
April is the clear peak (87 tornadoes), followed by May (70) — the southern-Plains spring season. What sets DFW apart from metros farther north is the size of its cool-season tail. Monthly counts from the SPC data:
The busiest single year on record was a tie between 1971 and 2019, with 17 metro tornadoes each. For how Texas ranks nationally, see our states with the most tornadoes analysis — Texas leads the country in raw count, and DFW is one of its most active corners. See also the owner-state view of Texas tornado records.
2019: the costliest tornado that killed no one
On the night of October 20, 2019, an EF3 tore a 15-mile path through the heart of North Dallas — Preston Hollow, Walnut Hill, the Midway Road retail corridor — damaging schools, big-box stores and thousands of homes. Remarkably, no one was killed. But the damage bill reached roughly $1.55 billion (NOAA NCEI), making it the sixth-costliest tornado in US history and the most expensive ever in the metro. It hit late in the evening through a dense, high-value urban corridor — the same geography that would have made it a mass-casualty event in daylight.
You can pull the actual conditions for any Dallas tornado day, back to 1970, on our historical weather lookup.
Frequently asked questions
Does Dallas get tornadoes?
Yes. The NOAA SPC database records 350 tornadoes in the Dallas–Fort Worth metro touchdown box between 1952 and 2024 — roughly five a year. The DFW metroplex sits at the southern end of Tornado Alley’s cool-season and spring corridor, so it sees more strong tornadoes than coastal Texas metros like Houston, though most are still rated F0 or F1.
Has Dallas ever had an F5 or EF5 tornado?
No. In 72 years of records the strongest tornadoes in the DFW metro were two F4s: the April 25, 1994 Lancaster tornado and the December 26, 2015 Garland–Rowlett EF4. There has never been an F5 or EF5 in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, though the metro has recorded 15 F3s.
What was the worst tornado in Dallas history?
Two tornadoes tie for deadliest, at 10 killed each. The April 2, 1957 Dallas Tornado (F3) tore through West Dallas and became one of the most-filmed and scientifically important tornadoes ever recorded. The December 26, 2015 Garland–Rowlett EF4 killed 10, mostly motorists on the President George Bush Turnpike. The costliest was the October 20, 2019 North Dallas EF3, with about $1.55 billion in damage but no deaths.
When is tornado season in Dallas?
April is the peak month (87 tornadoes in the record), followed by May (70) — the classic southern-Plains spring season. But DFW also has a real cool-season threat: October, November and December together account for 72 tornadoes, and the metro’s second-deadliest tornado (Garland–Rowlett) struck the day after Christmas. That winter risk is what catches North Texans off guard.
Explore the tornado record yourself
Every figure here comes from the NOAA SPC database, which we've made browsable. Map any state, filter by rating, or read the stories behind the record books: