US Storm Reports Map — Live Tornado, Hail & Wind Reports

This interactive map shows preliminary storm reports collected by the National Weather Service: tornadoes, damaging wind and large hail, plotted where they were reported and when. Press Use my location or type an address, and the list beside the map re-sorts to show what came in closest to you, with the distance and direction from where you are.

These are the raw reports that arrive while severe weather is happening, the same feed forecasters and storm chasers watch. That makes them fast, and it also makes them messy. Nothing here has been verified yet, tornado ratings have not been assigned, and the same event is sometimes reported more than once. That is the tradeoff for seeing it the same night rather than months later.

You can look at today, yesterday, or any single day back to 2005, filter by report type or state, and share the exact view you are looking at. Every report keeps the original National Weather Service wording, so you can read for yourself what was actually described.

How to use the storm reports map

1. Pick a day. The map opens on the current storm report day. Use Yesterday, or the date box, to go back as far as 2005.
2. Press Use my location, or type a city or address into the search box. The list beside the map re-sorts to put the closest reports first, with the distance and the compass direction from you.
3. Filter by what you care about. Turn tornado, wind or hail on and off, or narrow to a single state. The number on each button is how many reports of that type came in that day.
4. Tap any dot or list item to read the full report, including the original National Weather Service wording, the estimated hail size or wind speed, and which forecast office filed it.
5. Copy the link to share exactly what you are looking at. The date, the filters and the map position all travel with the URL.

About the data

Every report on this map comes from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center preliminary storm reports, a free public dataset in the public domain. There is no other source mixed in, and nothing here is estimated or modelled by us.

How current it is. The Storm Prediction Center rewrites the current day’s file continuously as reports arrive. This page refetches it every five minutes, and shows the exact time of its copy in the footer under the map, so you can always see how fresh the data is.

How far back it goes. The daily archive is reliable to the start of 2005, which is where the date picker stops. A day with genuinely no severe weather reports anywhere in the country returns an empty map, and that is a real answer rather than an error.

What the numbers mean. Hail is the diameter of the largest stone in inches. Wind is recorded in knots and shown here in miles per hour, and reports marked Estimated were judged by eye rather than measured. Tornado ratings usually read as pending, because an EF rating follows a damage survey days later. Times are stored in UTC and displayed in your own time zone.

What it does not include. Flooding, lightning, winter weather and non-severe storms are outside this dataset. It covers the United States only, and it records reports rather than radar or instrument readings, so coverage follows where people are.

Important: these are preliminary, unverified storm reports. They have not been quality-controlled. Locations and times are estimates, some reports are duplicated, and some are later corrected or removed entirely. The absence of a report does not mean nothing happened. This map is for information only. It is not a warning service and it is not a substitute for official National Weather Service watches and warnings at weather.gov. If severe weather threatens you, act on official warnings.

Frequently asked questions

What is a storm report?

A storm report is a single observation of severe weather that someone passed to the National Weather Service: a trained spotter, a law enforcement officer, an emergency manager, a storm chaser, or a member of the public. The Storm Prediction Center collects them nationally as they arrive. A report is a record that somebody saw something, not a measurement from an instrument network.

How quickly do reports appear on this map?

Usually within minutes of reaching the Storm Prediction Center, though that can lag the weather itself by anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. This page refreshes its copy of the data every five minutes. Reports also keep trickling in for a day or two after an event, so a storm day often looks busier a week later than it did that night.

Why do so many tornado reports say the rating is pending?

Because an EF rating comes from a damage survey, and surveys happen in the days after the storm. On the day itself the National Weather Service records that a tornado was reported without assigning a strength. Ratings are added to the official archive later, not to this preliminary feed.

Are these confirmed tornadoes, or just sightings?

They are unconfirmed at this stage. Some will turn out to be genuine tornadoes, some will be reclassified as straight-line wind damage, funnel clouds that never touched down, or landspouts, and some are duplicates of the same event reported by several people. The National Weather Service sorts this out afterwards. Treat the map as what was reported, not as a final count.

There was damage where I live but no report on the map. Why?

Reports depend on somebody being there and telling the National Weather Service. Rural areas, overnight storms and places with few spotters are under-reported, and minor damage often goes unrecorded entirely. An empty patch on this map means nothing was reported there, which is not the same as nothing happening there.

What does a hail size of 1.00 in mean?

It is the diameter of the largest hailstone reported, in inches. One inch is about a quarter, 1.75 inches is a golf ball, and 2.75 inches is a baseball. Severe hail starts at one inch. The raw data records this in hundredths of an inch, which this map converts for you.

Why does the day start at 12:00 UTC instead of midnight?

Severe weather in the United States peaks in the late afternoon and evening and often runs past midnight. A day running from noon to noon UTC keeps a single evening outbreak together instead of splitting it across two dates. So a report timed at 2:00 in the morning belongs to the previous day’s map.

How do I report storm damage myself?

Contact your local National Weather Service forecast office, which you can find at weather.gov, or call the non-emergency number for your local emergency management office. Never call 911 to file a weather report unless there is an emergency.