List of tornadoes striking downtown areas of large cities

[1] Many of the tornadoes listed were extremely destructive or caused numerous casualties, and the occurrence of a catastrophic event somewhere is inevitable.

Before this, lack of details on information from the events, as well as that most cities were far smaller in area and population complicate the record.

South America has no default tornado strength measurement system, so the storms here will be listed using the Fujita scale.

The downtown areas of two then-small towns (now large cities) in North Carolina were struck during the 1884 Enigma outbreak: Concord and Cary.

The "Oak Lawn tornado" of April 21, 1967 which killed 33 people, mostly those in rush hour traffic at a busy intersection, and moved across southern Chicago onto Lake Michigan is not included because it missed the downtown core.

This was determined to be most likely a windstorm causing downbursts or even a series of microbursts (with much of the damage coming from the straight-line winds), and not a tornado.

Similarly, the 1957 Dallas tornado hit areas northwest and north and downtown, missing the core of the city.

The city of Auckland in New Zealand has experienced multiple fatal tornadoes in its history, including one in 2012 which killed 3 people.

Tornadoes that have struck cities that fell short of 50,000 at their previous census include Hattiesburg, Mississippi's 2013 EF4,[276] Fort Smith, Arkansas's 1898 F4,[277] Portage, Michigan's 2024 EF2,[278] Newnan, Georgia's 2021 EF4,[279] and Barrie, Ontario's 1985 F4.