The El Reno Tornado of May 31, 2013
EF3 (radar-measured EF5 winds) • El Reno, Oklahoma • 16.2-mile path • 8 fatalities
At a glance
This guide is best for learning what a past event teaches without treating every detail as a forecast for the next storm.
- Reading time: about 10 minutes
- Primary focus: historical storms, damage surveys, warning lessons, exposure, and long-term context
- Watch for: survey uncertainty, population exposure, building vulnerability, warning access, and revised historical records
- Decision point: Use the event as a planning lesson: what warning, shelter, building, communication, or recovery detail would change today?
- Official check: NOAA Storm Events Database
The El Reno tornado of May 31, 2013 broke a record no other tornado has since matched: at its peak it was 2.6 miles wide — the widest tornado ever recorded. It also killed three professional storm chasers, including Tim Samaras, his son Paul Samaras, and Carl Young of TWISTEX — the first professional chasers ever killed by a tornado.
The Widest Tornado on Record
Mobile Doppler radar operated by researcher Howard Bluestein documented the tornado's continuous rotation over an area 2.6 miles across — greater than the previous record set by the Hallam, Nebraska tornado of 2004. At its widest, the tornado covered nearly the entire distance between rural county roads.
The tornado also produced radar-measured winds of 296 mph, one of the highest values ever recorded in Earth's atmosphere and comparable to the 1999 Bridge Creek reading of 301 mph.
Why the EF3 Rating?
Despite the radar-measured EF5-caliber winds, the National Weather Service rated the tornado EF3 based on damage indicators along its path. The tornado formed over open rural country west of El Reno and largely stayed there — encountering few well-built structures capable of documenting its full intensity. The EF Scale is a damage-based rating; a tornado that does not strike a strong structure cannot be rated based on peak wind alone.
This event is often cited by tornado researchers as a case study for the limitations of damage-based ratings. Some meteorologists refer to El Reno 2013 informally as a "hidden EF5."
Formation and Erratic Behavior
The tornado touched down at 6:03 PM CDT approximately 8 miles west of El Reno. Over the next 40 minutes it exhibited highly unusual behavior:
- Rapid expansion — the tornado grew from a rope funnel to 2.6 miles wide in minutes
- Erratic movement — the tornado suddenly changed direction and speed multiple times
- Peak forward speed of ~55 mph — extremely fast
- Multiple sub-vortices circulated within the parent tornado, with individual sub-vortex winds themselves potentially exceeding 200 mph
The Death of the TWISTEX Team
Storm chaser and severe weather researcher Tim Samaras — founder of the TWISTEX (Tactical Weather-Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornadoes Experiment) program — was intercepting the tornado to deploy scientific probes when the tornado unexpectedly turned toward his vehicle and rapidly accelerated. He, his son Paul Samaras, and colleague Carl Young were killed. They remain the only professional storm chasers ever killed by a tornado in the field.
The Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes and his crew narrowly survived after their vehicle was thrown by a sub-vortex.
Legacy
The El Reno tornado led to significant changes in storm chaser safety practices, including greater emphasis on longer standoff distances, better forecasting of erratic behavior, and improved communications between chasers and NWS forecasters. It also reignited debate about whether the EF Scale should incorporate radar-measured winds when high-quality mobile Doppler data are available.
Just 11 days earlier, the same corridor of central Oklahoma had been struck by the deadly Moore, OK EF5 tornado — making late May 2013 one of the most intense two-week periods in modern US tornado history.
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Launch simulator →Why this weather story matters
History articles need context because disaster rankings can flatten complicated events into one number. The deadliest storm is not always the strongest storm. The costliest event is not always the most meteorologically extreme. Population, building quality, time of day, communication, and preparedness all shape the outcome.
For The El Reno Tornado of May 31, 2013, the practical value is context. A reader should leave with a clearer sense of what the term means, what evidence supports it, and what choices it should influence before, during, or after hazardous weather.
The science in plain English
A historic weather event should be read in layers: the atmospheric setup, the hazard path, the warning environment, the people and buildings in harm's way, and the recovery that followed. Official databases and post-event summaries help separate measured or surveyed facts from later retellings, myths, and exaggerated claims.
Weather is rarely controlled by one ingredient. The same headline can play out differently depending on storm timing, terrain, building quality, warning access, and how many people are exposed. That is why official meteorology sources usually describe risk as a combination of probability, severity, and confidence rather than as a single yes-or-no answer.
How to use this information
Use this article as a case study. Ask what ingredients came together, what officials and residents knew at the time, which decisions had the biggest consequences, and which lessons still apply. For older events, remember that reporting, radar, communications, and damage surveys were often less complete than they are today.
If you are comparing this page with another guide, look for the scale of the question. Some pages explain what happens inside a storm, some explain what forecasters can detect, and others explain what a household, school, business, or community should do. Mixing those scales is how weather myths spread.
What to watch for
When reading any historic account, watch for source quality. Primary sources, official storm databases, NWS event summaries, and reputable historical archives are stronger than recycled lists without citations. Also watch for changing inflation, population, and damage-rating methods when comparing events across decades.
Pay attention to update timing. Forecasts and warnings are snapshots of the best available information, and high-impact weather can evolve between updates. When official guidance changes, treat the change as new information rather than as a contradiction.
Common mistakes
The biggest mistake is treating a famous event as a template for every future event. Weather repeats patterns but not exact details. Another mistake is ranking events without explaining the metric. Fatalities, inflation-adjusted cost, path length, rating, pressure, rainfall, and social impact answer different questions.
Another general mistake is using old experience as the only guide. People often prepare for the last event they remember, but the next event may arrive at a different time of day, affect a different road, or stress a different part of the home or community.
Reader checklist
Before moving on from The El Reno Tornado of May 31, 2013, use this quick checklist to separate useful weather information from noise:
- Can you name the main hazard: wind, water, lightning, heat, cold, visibility, or air quality?
- Do you know whether the page is explaining formation, detection, forecasting, safety, history, or recovery?
- Have you checked whether the official source is describing probability, observed damage, or immediate action?
- Can you identify the decision point: shelter, delay travel, evacuate, protect property, or keep monitoring?
- Do you have a second alert path if power, cell service, sirens, or internet access fail?
That checklist is intentionally conservative. Weather education is most valuable when it helps a reader make a calmer decision under pressure, not when it simply adds more dramatic storm vocabulary.
Tornado Hub articles are educational explainers and are not a live warning service. For immediate decisions, use official alerts from your local National Weather Service office, emergency management agency, or equivalent national weather authority.
How to read this guide
The El Reno Tornado of May 31, 2013 is most useful when it is read as a decision guide, not just a definition. The goal is to connect the weather setup, the warning language, and the practical action a reader may need before conditions become dangerous.
What lesson survives after the event details change?
Read this history article as a case study. The value is not only the date, rating, or death toll, but how meteorology, warning access, exposure, buildings, and decisions combined.
What to compare with official guidance
Compare the article with official storm databases, post-event surveys, reputable archives, inflation-adjusted damage context, population exposure, and changes in warning technology.
Historical confidence depends on the era. Modern radar and surveys give more detail than older newspaper accounts, but even recent events can have revised damage or casualty information.
Decision checklist
- Identify the main hazard first: wind, water, lightning, heat, cold, visibility, air quality, or travel disruption.
- Check whether the article is explaining a forecast ingredient, an observed hazard, a safety action, or a historical lesson.
- Compare the page with the latest official warning, local emergency instruction, or agency update before acting.
- Decide what would change your plan: sheltering sooner, delaying travel, avoiding water, preparing for outage, or checking on someone vulnerable.
- Keep a backup alert path in case power, cell service, internet, sirens, or social media updates fail.
Change the interpretation if official surveys are revised, better archives become available, or newer research changes whether an event was one tornado, a tornado family, or a broader wind event.
This added section is part of Tornado Hub's broader article-quality pass. It is educational context, not a live warning. During active weather, use official alerts and local instructions first.
Field notes and source map
The El Reno Tornado of May 31, 2013 benefits from one more layer of context: what evidence a reader should compare, what the official sources actually cover, and what practical decision the article should support. This added section is intentionally written like a newsroom sidebar: quick to scan, but deep enough to make the page more useful than a short definition.
Historical weather articles should do more than retell damage. The best case studies separate the meteorology, the exposure, the warning system, the built environment, and the lessons that still apply.
Do not compare events by one number alone. A death toll, damage total, path length, rating, or pressure record can each tell a different part of the story.
What to check next
After reading this page, compare the article with the latest official information, the local terrain or building exposure, and the time window in which the hazard matters. A weather concept becomes useful when it changes one of those things: where you go, when you travel, how you shelter, what you monitor, or whether you wait for a safer window.
For readers coming from search, the key is to avoid treating one term as the whole answer. A headline may name the storm type, but the useful details are usually smaller: the warning wording, the observation trend, the affected road or coast, the people who need extra time, and the source that will update first.
Source trail
NOAA event databases and NWS summaries are especially important for history pages because older records can be revised as surveys, archives, and research improve.
- NOAA Storm Events Database
- NOAA/NSSL Severe Weather 101
- National Weather Service safety portal
- NOAA Billion-Dollar Disasters
These links are provided so readers can move from Tornado Hub's plain-English explanation to official meteorological, warning, safety, or archive sources.