The Joplin tornado was a devastating EF5 tornado that struck the city of Joplin, Missouri, United States early on the evening of Sunday, May 22, 2011, causing catastrophic damage to it and the surrounding regions. As part of a larger late-May sequence of tornadic activity, the extremely violent tornado began just west of Joplin at about 5:34 p.m. CDT (UTC–05:00) and quickly reached a peak width of nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) as it tracked through the southern part of the city, before later impacting rural Jasper and Newton counties and dissipating after 38 minutes on the ground at 6:12 p.m. The tornado was on the ground for a total of 21.62 miles (34.79 km).
The tornado devastated a large portion of the city of Joplin, damaging nearly 8,000 buildings and destroying over 4,000 houses. The damage—which included major facilities like one of Joplin's two hospitals as well as much of its basic infrastructure—amounted to a total of $2.9 billion (equivalent to about $4 billion today), making the Joplin tornado the costliest single tornado in U.S. history. The insurance payout was the highest in Missouri history, breaking the previous $2 billion record from the hailstorm of April 10, 2001. The tornado was the fifth out of six total EF5 tornadoes that occurred in 2011, with four having occurred a month earlier during the 2011 Super Outbreak, and only two days before the same outbreak sequence produced another EF5 tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma on May 24.
