The first EF-5 tornado destroyed 95 per cent of this town
It took years for the residents of Greensburg, Kansas, to recover from the storm that struck in May 2007
The world’s first EF-5 tornado touched down in Greensburg, Kansas, in the late-evening hours on May 4, 2007.
People in harm’s way had 26 minutes of warning before the wall of wind swept away almost everything in its path.
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95 per cent of Greensburg was destroyed
Greensburg is a small farming community in southwestern Kansas about two hours west of Wichita.
A volatile setup over the Plains developed on that early-May evening. One powerful storm produced a tornado at 9:03 p.m., which gradually moved northwest over the next couple of minutes.
Chasers following the storm reported a large and violent tornado heading straight for Greensburg, prompting forecasters to upgrade the tornado warning to a rare tornado emergency.
This was an enormous tornado, growing more than 2 kilometres wide before it rolled into Greensburg with winds as strong as 331 km/h.
Intense winds destroyed 95 per cent of the town’s homes and businesses, leaving more than 500 families homeless. Despite the advanced warning, the extreme nature of the storm still killed 11 people, some of whom were buried in their basements by falling debris.
Storm produced the world’s first EF-5 tornado
Meteorologists and engineers visited Greensburg in the days following the storm to survey the extensive damage.
A comprehensive study led by Dr. Tim Marshall found damage to 662 homes, the vast majority of which were completely destroyed.
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The twister was so strong that it crumpled the town’s water tower and lofted from the hospital a steel-reinforced concrete roof beam that reportedly weighed 4,500 kilograms.
Ultimately, seven homes received scale-topping EF-5 damage. These well-built homes were anchored to their foundations, yet the 330+ km/h winds still swept them away.
This was the first storm rated EF-5 since the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale came into use just three months earlier. As of 2026, only 61 tornadoes in the U.S. and Canada had received F5 or EF-5 ratings, representing less than 0.01 per cent of all confirmed tornadoes since 1950.
Canada's only scale-topping twister would touch down just over one month after the Greensburg storm.
Header image of damage in Greensburg courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.