Tornado outbreak sequence of April 2–5, 1957
weather event in the United States
On April 2–5, 1957, a deadly tornado outbreak sequence struck most of the Southern United States. The outbreak killed at least 21 people across three states and produced at least 73 tornadoes from Texas to Virginia. The outbreak was most notable due to a tornado that hit a densely populated area of the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area, killing 10 people and injuring 200 or more. The tornado, highly visible for most of its path, was at the time the most observed and best-documented tornado in recorded history; hundreds of people photographed or filmed the F3 tornado as it moved just west of Downtown Dallas. The film of this tornado is still known for its unusually high quality and sharpness, considering the photography techniques and technology of the 1950s. Damage from the Dallas tornado reached as high as $4 million (1957 USD). Besides the famous Dallas tornado, other deadly tornadoes struck portions of Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma. Two F4 tornadoes struck southern Oklahoma on April 2, killing five people. Three other significant, F2-rated tornadoes that day killed two people in Texas and one more in Oklahoma. An F3 tornado struck rural Mississippi on April 4, killing one more person.
“Tornado outbreak sequence of April 2–5, 1957” enters the record as weather event in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tornado, outbreak and sequence can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4781875. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tornado outbreak sequence of April 2–5, 1957” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.