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Does Las Vegas Get Tornados? The Answer: Kinda

Author Slone Terranella

Destructive tornados have been ripping through parts of the Midwest and South leaving double digit death tolls and hundred of people displaced.

With national headlines being consumed with storm watchers and tornado news, it’s common to have the natural disaster-induced question of, “has Las Vegas ever had a tornado?”

And in short: Yes. Las Vegas has had a few tornados.

There have been four recorded tornados in the Vegas area, according to the Reno Gazette Journal’s Data Central.

An F0 tornado happened on Aug. 12, 1971, two tornados happened March 30, 1992 and one F0 tornado happened on Sep. 11, 1998.

One tornado on March 30, 1992 actually reached F1 status, while the other stayed at the F0 status. The F1 tornado caused over $250,000 in property damages.

However, the most severe tornado happened on Sept. 11, 1998. According to the Reno Gazette Journal’s tornado achieves, this day was filled with horrible weather.

On Sept. 11 1998, severe thunderstorms pounded the Las Vegas Valley and Lake Mead. This severe weather also caused golf ball-sized hail to punch the area. And to top this horrible-weather sundae, a small tornado and flash flooding was occurring simultaneously.

According to the data, the small tornado ripped off a roof in Henderson warehouse and destroyed a block wall at a service station.

The heavy rain that poured across the valley created flash flooding that inundated the streets, trapping a few motorists. The flooding was so severe that Clark County School District had to activate a “shelter-in-place” policy for 30 schools, the archive states. School busses did not take the children home until the flooding subsided.
So, there have been documented cases of tornados in the valley. But, it’s seldom that we will read a tornado case that mirrors the destructive path of other twisters that happened in Mississippi, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc.
It’s hard for tornados to form in the Western region of the U.S. compared to the Midwest or Mid-South, even with the right conditions for a tornado.
Although Vegas gets a decent amount of moisture in the atmosphere during monsoon season, it seldom has wind shear that tornadic activity requires during that time of year, according to KTNV Channel 13.
Vegas thunderstorms also have high cloud base, which makes it difficult to get that air circulation that reaches the ground and forms a twister.
There are also no recorded deaths associated with the tornados in Las Vegas. So overall, this is another reason we love Las Vegas. We can add tornados to the list of weather disasters that seldom touch the valley.

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Author Slone Terranella
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