A tornado outbreak across the central and southern United States has now produced 23 confirmed touchdowns in the past 48 hours, the Storm Prediction Center reported — more than doubling the count of 10 confirmed twisters from the previous reporting cycle and marking a significant escalation of a severe weather campaign stretching from the Gulf Coast into the upper Midwest.
Confirmed tornadoes struck Alabama, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Wisconsin. The Storm Prediction Center documented touchdowns at 1 SW Whites Crossing, Miss.; Dupont, La.; Pekin and Monmouth, Ill.; and 3 SW Keokuk, Iowa, among other sites across the seven-state corridor. The same system generated 34 large hail reports and 527 damaging wind reports — figures that illustrate how broadly severe conditions extended beyond the individual twister tracks.
The National Weather Service maintained 23 active alerts across those same seven states as post-event assessments continued, indicating that residual hazards had not fully cleared even as the outbreak’s primary phase wound down.
Thursday’s reporting documented 19 active tornado warnings covering Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, West Virginia and Wisconsin, with radar-indicated rotation developing along a corridor from the Gulf Coast into the Appalachian interior. In the hours since, the confirmed tornado count has more than doubled and the geographic focus has shifted materially: Iowa and Mississippi now anchor the confirmed damage record, while the West Virginia and Appalachian component of the earlier cycle has receded. The involvement of Iowa and Wisconsin signals that the system’s severe weather potential extended further into the upper Midwest than the previous day’s warning footprint suggested.
The 527 damaging wind reports stand as the most widely distributed element of this outbreak, reflecting hazardous conditions across areas that did not experience tornado touchdowns. The 34 large hail events concentrated additional impact through the Mississippi Valley portion of the storm track.
Residents across the Gulf Coast states should check with their local National Weather Service offices for updated damage assessments. Communities in southern Louisiana, including those in the New Orleans weather area, and across Mississippi — including the Jackson weather metro and surrounding counties — should monitor local National Weather Service stations as survey teams work through impacted zones.
The Storm Prediction Center’s 48-hour confirmed tornado count will continue to be revised upward as National Weather Service offices complete ground surveys across all seven affected states.