Based on the 1991–2010 averaging period, 155 tornadoes occur across the country during April.
[1] While the first three months of a year commonly feature tornadic activity across the Southeastern United States in close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, this risk area expands to include the U.S. Midwest and U.S. Southern Great Plains in April, maximized in the states of Texas and Oklahoma.
[2] This expansion comes as powerful winter-like systems overlap with an increasingly warm and humid airmass from the Gulf of Mexico.
The first outbreak came from April 7–9, when 31 generally weak tornadoes were recorded across the Midwestern United States and Northeast, especially in Ohio.
Total tornado activity in the United States caused 40 deaths in April 2020.