First Severe Weather Of The Fall (Recap)

Severe weather impacted parts of the Mississippi Valley and South October 17-19, with damaging winds, hail and even a few tornadoes all being reported. This breaks a relatively quiet stretch for the U.S. this fall.

Recap

- A few wind reports were scattered across the central U.S. on Friday, with a gust of 65 mph reported in Crane, Texas.

- Severe weather peaked Saturday, with storm reports exceeding 50

• There were four tornado reports, including an EF-1 tornado that touched down in Madison County, Louisiana.
• Over 40 damaging wind gusts were reported, including a gust of 65 mph in Hectorville, Oklahoma
• Golf ball-sized hail was reported in McIntosh County, Oklahoma, and Calhoun County, Louisiana.

- The severe weather shifted east on Sunday, where nearly 30 damaging wind gusts primarily stretched from Indiana to Virginia.

• The highest report was over 60 mph in Gibson County, Indiana.

A Refresher

It has been awhile since a more concentrated severe weather threat has been on the table.

The keys are to be aware of the threat, when it could happen, and have a plan to seek safe shelter.

Have multiple ways of receiving severe weather watches and warnings from the National Weather Service, including from an app like The Weather Channel app, NOAA weather radio, or local TV and radio.

Make sure your smartphone and NOAA weather radio are fully charged and any "do not disturb" function is turned off at night, so an overnight alert can wake you up.

A Quiet Stretch in 2025

It's not your imagination. It has been rather quiet, recently, on the severe thunderstorm front.

The map below shows the total number of severe thunderstorm reports — including tornado reports — so far in October. It's far short of 100 total reports nationwide in the first half of October.

In fact, the biggest news so far this month regarding severe weather was an announcement of a late June EF5 tornado in North Dakota, the nation's first in over 12 years.

October usually isn't an active severe weather month. It averaged only 59 tornadoes over the past 20 years.

So far, the month has been dominated by expansive high pressure aloft over the Great Lakes, eastern Canada, the Northeast and Plains states. That's a pattern of warmth, but suppressive of thunderstorms.

And when that pattern hasn't been in place, cool, fall air has plunged into the eastern two-thirds of the country, taking thunderstorms off the table.

We've also had a complete lack of tropical storms and hurricanes in the U.S. since short-lived Chantal moved into the Carolinas in early July. These landfalling storms can be a significant source of tornadoes in the fall, as we saw last October with Hurricane Milton in Florida.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.