NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Middle Tennessee is no stranger to severe weather, and certainly no stranger to tornadoes.

Since 1950, Tennessee has recorded a total of 1262 tornadoes, the majority of which have happened in March and April, with May not far behind.

From 1950 through 2020, Middle Tennessee has seen an average of nine tornadoes per year, while the entire state has recorded an average of 18 tornadoes per year. However, looking at the last 25 years specifically, tornado numbers have ticked up significantly across Tennessee.

Middle Tennessee has seen an average of 17 tornadoes per year between 1995 and 2020, nearly double the average of the last 70 years overall.

So, how does this year stack up?

Impressively, so far we’ve already seen 16 tornadoes across Middle Tennessee, and 25 tornadoes across the state. With that, Tennessee has already far surpassed its 20-year average.

More than half of Middle Tennessee’s 2021 tornadoes happened just this past week, as a line of storms on May 4 led to an outbreak of at least 11 EF-0s.

Those tornadoes, as brief as they were, left damage across a large portion of the region. While we’ve made it through the most active months of Tennessee’s severe weather season, that doesn’t mean we won’t see another tornado this year. Although tornadoes are most popular in Tennessee between March and May, we’ve seen them happen in the past during every month of the year.