Tornado outbreak of April 2, 2006
| Type | Tornado outbreak |
|---|---|
| Duration | April 2, 2006 |
| Tornadoes confirmed | 66 confirmed |
| Max. rating1 | F3 tornado |
| Duration of tornado outbreak2 | 6 hours, 43 minutes |
| Fatalities | 27 fatalities (+2 non-tornadic), 348 injuries |
| Damage | $1.1 billion |
| Areas affected | Midwestern United States, Mississippi River Valley |
| 1Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale 2Time from first tornado to last tornado | |
During the late afternoon and evening of April 2, 2006, a series of tornadoes broke out in the central United States. It was the second major outbreak of 2006, in the same area that suffered considerable destruction in a previous outbreak on March 11 and 12, as well as an outbreak on November 15, 2005. The most notable tornadoes of the outbreak struck northeastern Arkansas, the Missouri Bootheel, and West Tennessee, where several communities – including Marmaduke, Arkansas, Caruthersville, Missouri, and Newbern, Tennessee suffered devastating damage. In total, 66 tornadoes touched down across seven states, which is the most in a single day in 2006. In addition, there were over 850 total severe weather reports, including many reports of straight-line winds exceeding hurricane force and hail as large as softballs, which caused significant additional damage in a nine-state region.
The outbreak caused 27 tornado-related deaths plus two other deaths from straight-line winds. It was the deadliest tornado outbreak in the United States since the tornado outbreak sequence of May 2003, which killed 48 people. Twenty-six of those deaths were caused by a single supercell thunderstorm which produced damaging and long lived tornadoes from north central Arkansas into northwest Tennessee.